He spoke with a wheedling politeness, but very likely a threat underlay his words. I thought it wise to take no notice of them, but, rising from my seat, I wished him good night. And there the conversation would have ended but for a couple of pictures upon the wall which caught my eye. One was the ordinary picture which you may come upon in a hundred alehouses by the sea: the sailor leaving his cottage for a voyage, his wife and children clinging about his knees, and in the distance an impossible ship unfurling her sails upon an impossible ocean. The second, however, it was, which caught my attention. It was the picture of a sailor's return. His wife and children danced before him, he was clad in magnificent garments, and to prove the prosperity of his voyage he carried in his hand a number of gold watches and chains; and the artist, whether it was that he had a sense of humour or that he merely doubted his talents, instead of painting the watches, had cut holes in the canvas and inserted little discs of bright metal. "This is a new way of painting pictures, Mr. Glen," said I. Mr. Glen's taste in pictures was crude, and for these he expressed a quite sentimental admiration. "But," I objected, "the artist is guilty of a libel, for he makes the sailor out to be a sneak-thief." Mr. Glen became indignant. "Because he comes home with wealth untold?" he asked grandly. "No, but because he comes home with watches," said I. Whereupon Mr. Glen was at some pains to explain to me that the watches were merely symbolical. "And the picture's true," he added, and fell to pinching my arm. "There's many a landsman laughs; but sailors, you says, says you, 'comes home with watches in their 'ands more than they can 'old and sets up for gentle-folk,' says you." "Like old Adam Mayle, I adds," said I; and Mr. Glen dropped my arm and stood a little way off blinking at me. "You knew Adam?" he said, in a fierce sort of way. "No," I answered. "But you know of him?" "Yes," said I, slowly, "I know of him, but not as much as you do, Mr. Glen, who were quartermaster with him at Whydah on the ship _Royal Fortune_." I spoke at random, wondering how he would take the words, and they had more effect than I had even hoped for. His face turned all of a mottled colour; he banged his fist upon the table and uttered a horrible oath, calling upon God to slay him if he had ever set foot on the deck of a ship named the _Royal Fortune_.