and, tearing open my shirt, I displayed the silver coin.

"Look, Noah," I cried, "you shall have this, and five hundred
dollars beside by and by. Listen while I tell you about it."

And then I told how, ever since I had worn that coin about my neck,
I had had the best of good fortune. It had brought me friends, and
raised me from a lowly position. I had been imprisoned and escaped;
I had been shot at, without scathe. I had gained what I prized most
in all the world. I fear I exaggerated; certainly I had never
before ascribed any talismanic power to the coin which I had kept
for no other purpose than to humiliate the man who had humiliated
me. But in this extremity I saw the possibility of working on the
negro's superstitious mind, and I would have racked my invention to
give the piece the most marvelous virtues under heaven.

But I had said enough. With a stare of wonderment Noah took the
coin in his hand, turned it over, examined it, handled it as though
it was a sacred object. I lifted the string from my neck.

"There, take it; 'tis yours," I said, handing it to him, and then,
by a happy afterthought, I myself slipped it over the negro's head.
He saw the white coin lying on his dusky breast, a smile overspread
his face, most wondrously obliterating all the lines of malice and
hate; and then, turning swiftly, he went to the tree, with me at
his heels, and cut the cords.

Cludde fell fainting into my arms, and as I laid him on the ground
and begged for water (not a drop had passed his lips for thirty-six
hours), I wondered whether he would ever know how I had paid the