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THE PIRATE CITY.
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vas bag or wallet, which had the appearance of being well filled.

Slinging this across his shoulder, Ted Flaggan pursued his way, moralizing as he went, until he came to a rugged hollow among the hills, in which was a chaos of large stones, mingled with scrubby bushes. Here he paused again, and the wrinkles of perplexity returned to his brow, as he peered hither and thither.

Presently he observed a sharp-edged rock, which, projecting upwards, touched, as it were, the sky-line behind it. Moving to the right until he brought this rock exactly in line with another prominent boulder that lay beyond it, he advanced for about fifty yards, and then, stopping, looked cautiously round among the bushes.

"It must be hereabouts," he muttered, "for the Jew was werry partikler, an' bid me be partikler likewise, seein' that the hole is well hid, an' wan is apt to come on it raither—hah!"

Suddenly poor Ted fell headlong into the very hole in question, and would infallibly have broken his neck, if he had not happened to descend on the shoulders of a man who, crouched at the bottom of the hole, had been listening intently to the sound of his approach, and who now seized his throat in a grip that was obviously not that of a child!

The British tar was not slow to return the com-