This discovery was made in the year of 1768, and seven years later I chanced to be standing upon the quay at Leghorn when a vessel from Oporto, laden with wine and oil, dropped anchor in the harbour, and her master came ashore. I recognised him at once, although the years had changed him. It was Nathaniel Roper. I followed him up into the town, where he did his business with the shipping agent and thence repaired to a tavern. I entered the tavern, and sitting down over against him at the same table, begged him to oblige me by drinking a glass at my expense, which he declared himself ready to do. "But I cannot tell why you should want to drink with me rather than another," said he. "Oh! as to that," said I, "we are old acquaintances." He answered, with an oath or two, that he could not lay his tongue to the occasion of our meeting. "You swear very fluently and well," said I. "But you swore yet more fluently, I have no doubt, that morning you sailed away from St. Helen's Island without the Portuguese King's cross." His face turned the colour of paper, he half rose from his chair and sat down again. "I was never on Tresco," he stammered. "Who spoke of Tresco, my friend?" said I, with a laugh. "I made mention of St. Helen's. Yet you were upon Tresco. Have you forgotten? The shed on Castle Down? The Abbey burial ground?" and then he knew me, though for awhile he protested that he did not. But I persuaded him in the end that I meant no harm to him. "You were at Sierra Leone with Cullen, maybe," said I. "Tell me how young Peter Tortue came by his death?" and he told me the story which he had before told to old Peter in an alehouse at Wapping. Peter, it appeared, had not been able to hold his tongue at Sierra Leone. It became known through his chattering that Glen's company and Cullen Mayle were going up the river in search of treasure, and it was decided for the common good to silence him lest he should grow more particular, and relate what the treasure was and how it came to be buried on the bank of that river. George Glen was for settling the matter with the stab of a knife, but Cullen Mayle would have none of such rough measures.