“You shall have fifty score, if you choose,” said Tom, bursting with gratitude and with generosity in his newly found treasure.

“You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom,” said the Parson, “and I’ll thank you to the last day of my life.”

Tom scooped up a double handful of silver money.  “Take it, sir,” he said, “and you may have as much more as you want of it.”

He poured it into the dish that the good man made of his hands, and the Parson made a motion as though to empty it into his pocket.  Then he stopped, as though a sudden doubt had occurred to him.  “I don’t know that ’tis fit for me to take this pirate money, after all,” he said.

“But you are welcome to it,” said Tom.

Still the Parson hesitated.  “Nay,” he burst out, “I’ll not take it; ’tis blood-money.”  And as he spoke he chucked the whole double handful into the now empty chest, then arose and dusted the sand from his breeches.  Then, with a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie the bags again and put them all back into the chest.

They reburied the chest in the place whence they had taken it, and then the Parson folded the precious paper of directions, placed it carefully in his wallet, and his wallet in his pocket.

“Tom,” he said, for the twentieth time, “your fortune has been made this day.”

And Tom Chist, as he rattled in his breeches pocket the half-dozen doubloons he had kept out of his treasure, felt that what his friend had said was true.

* * * * *

As the two went back homeward across the level space of sand, Tom Chist suddenly stopped stock still and stood looking about him. “’Twas just here,” he said, digging his heel down into the sand, “that they killed the poor black man.”

“And here he lies buried for all time,” said Parson Jones; and as he spoke he dug his cane down into the sand.  Tom Chist shuddered.  He would not have been surprised if the ferrule of the cane had struck something soft beneath that level surface.  But it did not, nor was any sign of that tragedy ever seen again.  For, whether the pirates had carried away what they had done and buried it elsewhere, or whether the storm in blowing the sand had completely levelled off and hidden all sign of that tragedy where it was enacted, certain it is that it never came to sight again—­at least so far as Tom Chist and the Reverend Hillary Jones ever knew.

VII

This is the story of the treasure-box.  All that remains now is to conclude the story of Tom Chist, and to tell of what came of him in the end.

He did not go back again to live with old Matt Abrahamson.  Parson Jones had now taken charge of him and his fortunes, and Tom did not have to go back to the fisherman’s hut.

Old Abrahamson talked a great deal about it, and would come in his cups and harangue good Parson Jones, making a vast protestation of what he would do to Tom—­if he ever caught him—­for running away.  But Tom on all these occasions kept carefully out of his way, and nothing came of the old man’s threatenings.