But now he saw how imprudent he was. As he mentioned that name the girl started from her seat and retreated from him to the other end of the verandah. "You frighten me," she said. "I do not understand. How do you know this?" "Do not be alarmed, I beg," he answered in return. "When you have told your story I will put into your hands a paper that has been found, written by a forerunner of mine who knew Simon Alderly. Then you will see how I know what I do. Pray feel no alarm. I mean you nothing but goodwill, nothing. The treasure shall be yours and no one else's. Will you trust in me?" "Yes," she said, once more calmed. "Yes, I will." Then she seated herself again and at his persuasion continued the narrative, while Reginald could not but reflect how little fear Nicholas need have had of "Martin coming back with the sloop." The bewildered mind of the drink-inflamed pirate had mixed up two separate sojourns in Coffin Island! "The sloop went to Tortola to purchase provisions, and, since they were short-handed, there being but three men excepting my ancestor, all went in her but him. And then it was he found the treasure, it being in a vault or cavern beneath the floor of the hut. It was the simplest way in which he unearthed it, he wrote, and had he not been alone it must have been discovered by the others as well as he. There was a trap-door in the flooring, with a great ring to it, quite visible to anyone, and opening easily. And when he went down some steps into the cavern he found it all--all! Only he had no chance to take it away then, he wrote to his wife; so, putting a vast number of gold pieces in his pocket, he carefully closed the trap-door up again and covered it over with earth, which he stamped down with his feet so that his companions should observe nothing. And in the paper which he left, giving such instructions as were necessary, which were not many--the place was so easily to be found--he wrote down that he had since, whenever opportunity offered, paid visits to Coffin Island, but, being always accompanied by comrades, he never yet had had a chance of removing it. And, he said, if he never brought it home and she found the paper, then she must go to Coffin Island after his death and get it for herself. It was a large treasure, a great fortune, he wrote, it must not be lost." "So," said Reginald, "she came here?" "She came here," the girl continued, "and with her came her son and a woman he had married, a Barbadian. But through all the generations from the day she came--which was in the year 1723--and I am the eighth in descent from her, they have never found the treasure. The vault was there, but there was nothing in it." "Yet your family have continued to seek for it," exclaimed Reginald. "I should almost have thought they would have desisted."