It consisted of a few hundred new American eagles and a few times as
many Spanish doubloons; for pirates like good broad pieces, fit to
skim flat-spun across the waves, or play pitch-and-toss with for men's
lives or women's loves; they give five-dollar pieces or thin British
guineas to the boy who brings them drink, and silver to their
bootblacks, priests, or beggars.
It was contained--the gold--in an old canvas bag, a little rotten and
very brown and mouldy, but tied at the neck by a piece of stout and
tarnished braid of gold. It had no name or card upon it nor letters on
its side, and it lay for nearly thirty years high on a shelf, in an
old chest, behind three tiers of tins of papers, in the deepest corner
of the vault of the old building of the Old Colony Bank.
Yet this money was passed to no one's credit on the bank's books, nor
was it carried as part of the bank's reserve. When the old concern
took out its national charter, in 1863, it did not venture or did not
remember to claim this specie as part of the reality behind its
greenback circulation. It was never merged in other funds, nor
converted, nor put at interest. The bag lay there intact, with one
brown stain of blood upon it, where Romolo de Soto had grasped it
while a cutlass gash was fresh across his hand. And so it was carried,
in specie, in its original package: "Four hundred and twenty-three
American eagles, and fifteen hundred and fifty-six Spanish doubloons;
deposited by ---- De Soto, June twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine; _for the benefit of whom it may concern_."
And it concerned very much two people with whom our narration has to
do,--one, James McMurtagh, our hero; the other, Mr. James Bowdoin,
then called Mr. James, member of the firm of James Bowdoin's Sons. For
De Soto, having escaped with his neck, took good pains never to call
for his money.