sh in France
and took shipment with a pilot captain friend named Pedro Morales,
who was great fighting pilot of Spain. They delivered free on board
and everything of best description, until the ship ran against a
storm, which was indeed terrible. Many days they blow where the
Pilots could not say; and after varied assortment of trouble they
came against this strange shore of Maderia and all wrecked. So
perished in each others arms this famous love story, which are
indeed a sad and lovely legend.

The pilot Pedro Morales exaped and went away to Portugal, where he
told the King about this Island. So it was dixovered again by a
navigator for the King, and always the populations since named the
place Machico, after Robert Matcham and Anna d'Arfet, which died
together on the shore._

I had no least desire left to laugh when I had finished, not even to
smile at the method of the quaint chronicler through whose commercial
phrase there penetrated such a heroic gusto of sentiment. Again and more
subtly, more alluringly, I felt the presence of that valid marvel, the
delightful fantasy of truth, for which no man ever quite outgrows the
yearning. It was here, under my hand....

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

"Bought it from a hawker on the streets. Everybody buys 'em. They tell
you the price of hammocks and seats in the theater and where to get
sugarcane brandy and 'article of native indus'ry.'"

"But it is true?"

"Quite true. Do you suppose I wouldn't go to the municipal library and
see? You'll find it in all the history books, just as he says there--the
local tradition about the discovery of Madeira."

"And you yourself are Robert Matcham!" I murmured.

All the excitement was on my side. Except for his single outcry, with
the vivid flash of color it had lent, he betrayed none. "Have you
chanced to examine the coin yourself?" he asked in his level voice.

I felt a kind of anger against him, that any chap with such a yarn
should take such an indifferent way to spin it; and presently plucking
out the doubloon and holding it under the lights, I came to the crowning
wonder of all.

It was a rude bit of coinage, in size and weight considerably better
than a double eagle, of a metal too soft to have long withstood the
direct friction of the waves. An incrusted discoloration gave me a hint
that it must have lain well bedded down; the bright scratches to