I dared not put my weight on it for a proper pry.

I took a room in a small but respectable hotel, European plan.

It was in Boston, I think I said.

Oh, how careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my frame inhabited.

But I bought drinks for others, most carefully selected--bought drinks with an air of prosperity that was as a credential to my story; and in my cups (my apparent cups, steward), spun an old man's yarn of the _Wide Awake_, the longboat, the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand .-- A fathom under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it smacked of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the Spanish Main.
"You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward?
I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, California gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the diggings of forty-nine and fifty.