The man continued: "You are satisfied, I presume, that this is the real article. How it has come into my hands you needn't seek to enquire." I thought I knew that well enough without pondering the matter. "I say the Captain found this at the haunted house. Where he found it you probably know. In a certain dark passage of which you are well aware there is a skeleton chained to a niche in the wall. How it came there is interesting enough in its way, but here the tale would be irrelevant. But when the Captain bought the house many years ago, _bought_ it, you understand, though it seems he prefers to play the rôle of tenant rather than owner"--that was information to me, and I busily meditated it while still alertly listening--"when the Captain bought the house and accidentally discovered the passage I have mentioned, he found the document here hung about the neck of the unfortunate man whose bones only remained to tell of the agonies he had suffered. The Captain was interested in the document. But, when he first read it and learnt of the treasure which seemed to have borne such evil fruit as it were before his very eyes, his first thought was to destroy the thing. Why his intention altered we needn't enquire. Suffice it to say he took counsel with his two younger brothers, and they decided to search for the buried gold." He took breath, and resumed: "A ship was purchased, a crew enrolled, and the search began. It was successful. Then what happened we needn't follow in detail. It may be that the treasure was really accursed. Of the band of twenty who looked upon it and handled it, actually winning for themselves a fortune to satisfy the avarice of the most grasping, only three survived. One was the Captain, one his servant, a boy of seventeen at the time; a foreign boy who loved the Captain as his own father, and would have shed his last drop of blood, as the saying is, to serve him." Here the man's voice became unusually impressive as though wishing to drive his point home. As for me, I knew he was speaking of Abou. "And the third was the Captain's youngest brother." He paused and added, "His favourite brother," and continued, "Whether there had been a quarrel or not we won't seek to enquire. It is enough to say that the brother escaped with a fatal wound in the neck, but carrying with him this manuscript." He tapped it with his finger. "He had been stabbed; and as I say the wound was fatal. But before he died he succeeded in swimming to land and hiding in a cave, where he was found by a young lad who tried to staunch his wound, and would have taken him to shelter. But he died where he lay, having first given the document to the boy, telling him to preserve it as he valued riches and happiness. "What happened to the dead man doesn't concern us. The boy took the document and learnt its secret. He became a man, and in his turn made search for the gold. His name, we will say, was Playden--Walter Noel Playden, to be exact."