He bade his step-father hold the light nigher, and then, his mother having come down-stairs by this time, he flung back the lid and displayed to the dazzled sight of all the great treasure therein contained.
You are to suppose that there was no sleep for any of them that night, for what with Barnaby's narrative of his adventures, and what with the thousand questions asked of him, it was broad daylight before he had finished the half of all that he had to relate.
The next day but one brought the Belle Helen herself into port, with the terrible news not only of having been attacked at night by pirates, but also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For whether it was the sudden fright that overset him, or whether it was the strain of passion that burst some blood-vessel upon his brain, it is certain that when the pirates quitted the Belle Helen, carrying with them the young lady and Barnaby and the travelling-trunks, they left Sir John Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor, frothing at the mouth and black in the face, as though he had been choked. It was in this condition that he was raised and taken to his berth, where, the next morning about two o'clock, he died, without once having opened his eyes or spoken a single word.
As for the villain man-servant, no one ever saw him afterwards; though whether he jumped overboard, or whether the pirates who so attacked the ship had carried him away bodily, who shall say?
Mr. Hartright had been extremely perplexed as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if that treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt but that it belonged to his wife—she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir. Thus it was that he satisfied himself, and thus that great fortune (in actual computation amounting to upward of sixty-three thousand pounds) fell to Barnaby True, the grandson of that famous pirate William Brand.
As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor could Barnaby decide whether it was divided as booty among the pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.
It is thus we reach the conclusion of our history, with only this to observe, that whether that strange appearance of Captain Brand was indeed a ghostly and spiritual visitation, or whether he was present on those two occasions in flesh and blood, he was, as has been said, never heard of again.
IV. A TRUE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL AT NEW HOPE
At the time of the beginning of the events about to be narrated—which the reader is to be informed occurred between the years 1740 and 1742— there stood upon the high and rugged crest of Pick-a-Neck-a-Sock Point (or Pig and Sow Point, as it had come to be called) the wooden ruins of a disused church, known throughout those parts as the Old Free Grace Meeting-house.