“’T would be hard for ’em to prove their claims, sir, if what McGosh told me was true.  Accordin’ to his account, the gold came from all sides—­starboard and larboard, as a body might say—­and it was jumbled together, and so mixed, that a young girl could not pick out her lover’s keepsake from among the other pieces.  ’T was the ’arnin’s of three years cruisin’, as I understood him to say; and much of the stuff had been exchanged in port, especially to get the custom-house officers and king’s officers out of its wake.  There’s king’s officers among them bloody Spaniards, Deacon Pratt, all the same as among the English.”

“Be temperate in your language, friend; a rough speech is unseemly, particularly of the Lord’s day.”

Daggett rolled the tobacco over his tongue, and his eyes twinkled with a sort of leer, which indicated that the fellow was not without some humour.  He submitted patiently to the rebuke, however, making no remonstrance against its reception.

“No, no,” he added presently, “a starn chase, they say, is a long chase; and the owners of them doubloons, if owners they can now be called, must be out of sight, long before this.  Accordin’ to McGosh, some of the gold r’aally captured had passed back through the hands of them that sent it to sea, and they did not know their own children!”

“It is certainly hard to identify coin, and it would be a bold man who should stand up, in open court, and make oath to its being the same he had once held.  I have heard of the same gold’s having answered the purposes of twenty banks, one piece being so like another.”

“Ay, ay, sir, gold is gold; and any of it is good enough for me, though doubloons is my favour_ites_.  When a fellow has got half-a-dozen doubloons alongside of his ribs, he can look the landlord full in the eye; and no one thinks of saying to sich as he, ’it’s time to think of shipping ag’in.’”

From the nature of this discourse, it will not be easy for the reader to imagine the real condition of Daggett.  At the very moment he was thus conversing of money, and incidentally manifesting his expectations of accompanying Roswell Gardiner in the expedition that was about to sail, the man had not actually four-and-twenty hours of life in him.  Mary Pratt had foreseen his true state, accustomed as she was to administer to the wants of the dying; but no one else appeared to be aware of it, not even the deacon.  It was true that the fellow spoke, as it might be, from his throat only, and that his voice was hollow, and sometimes reduced to a whisper; but he ascribed this, himself, to the circumstance that he had taken a cold.  Whether the deacon believed this account or not, it might be difficult to say; but he appeared to give it full credit.  Perhaps his mind was so much occupied with the subject of his discussions with Daggett, that it did not sufficiently advert to the real condition of the man.