CHAPTER III.
_In Which I Charter the "Maggie Darling."_ As luck would have it, the loss, or rather the theft, of Henry P.
Tobias's narrative, was not so serious as it at first seemed, for it fortunately chanced that John Saunders had had it copied; but the theft remained none the less mysterious.

What could be the motive of the thief with whom--quite unreasonably and doubtless unjustly--my fancy persisted in connecting that unprepossessing face so keenly attentive in John Saunders's outer office, and again so plainly eavesdropping at his open window.
However, leaving that mystery for later solution, John Saunders, Charlie Webster, and I spent the next evening in a general and particular criticism of the narrative itself.

There were several obvious objections to be made against its authenticity.

To start with, Tobias, at the time of his deposition, was an old man--seventy-five years old--and it was more than probable that his experiences as a pirate would date from his early manhood; they were hardly likely to have taken place as late as his fortieth year.

The narrative, indeed, suggested their taking place much earlier, and there would thus be a space of at least forty years between the burial of the treasure and his deathbed revelation.