rse, she doesn't
always pay in Spanish doubloons."

"But she does sometimes?"

"O! once in a great while," he answered, evasively. "I suppose they have
a few old coins in the family, and use them when they run out of
others."

It was as lame an explanation as well could be, and no one could doubt
that, whatever his reason for so doing, he was lying.

"But haven't you trouble in disposing of them?" I enquired.

"Gold is always gold," he answered, "and we don't see enough of it here
to be particular as to whose head is stamped upon it, or what date.
Besides, as I said, it isn't as if I got many of them; and you can
always dispose of them as curiosities."

"Will you sell me this one?" I asked.

"I see no harm in your having it," he said, "but I'd just as soon you
didn't mention where you got it."

"Certainly," I answered, disguising my wonder at his secretiveness.
"What is it worth?"

He named the sum of sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents. Having paid
him that amount, I bade him good-night, glad to be alone with my eager,
glowing thoughts. These I took with me to a bit of coral beach made
doubly white by the moon, rustled over by giant palms, and whispered to
by the vast living jewel of the sea. Surely my thoughts had a brightness
to match even this glitter of the night. I took out my strange doubloon,
and flashed it in the moon.

But, brightly as it shone, it hardly seemed as bright as it would have
seemed a short while back; or, perhaps, it were truer to say that in
another, newer aspect it shone a hundred times more brightly. The
adventure to which it called me was no longer single and simple as
before, but a gloriously confused goal of cloudy splendours, the burning
core of which--suddenly raying out, and then lost again in
brightness--were the eyes of a mysterious girl.

CHAPTER III

_Under the Influence of the Moon._

My days now began to drift rather aimlessly, as without apparent purpose
I continued to linger on an island that might well seem to have little
attraction to a stranger--how little I could see by the mystification of
the good Tom, in whom, for once, of course, I could not confide. Yet I
had a vague purpose; or, at least, I had a feeling that, if I waited on,
something would develop in the direction of my hopes. That doubloon
still suggested that it was the key to a door of fascinating mystery to
which Chance might at any moment direct me.

And--why not admit it?--apart fro