The matter did not altogether rest here, however, for the colonel suspecting that we were implicated, next day we were ordered as if for marching, just as if we were going to leave the place that very day, but the men being quite up to that trick, knowing that the French were still in front, concealed their shares of the money in and around the cellar. I remember well the manner in which my own and one of my fellow-comrades' shares were hidden: there was a heap of pumpkins in the cellar, and in one of these we enclosed our money, cutting a piece out of it of sufficient size to admit the dollars, and after closing it up with the top of the original piece, mixing it again with the remainder of the heap. The company was then marched out into a field, and all our knapsacks and pockets were searched, but even the little money that some must have had before was missing.
The colonel did not mind being baffled so much as the major did, who told the colonel that if he left it in his hands he would endeavour to find the money, to which the colonel replied that he was just the man the Portuguese wanted. The manner in which this cunning major went to work might have succeeded with men less artful than he found us to be, but every one in the cellar had part in it, so it was to the interest of all to keep the affair secret, and not only that, but every man's share in the prize happened to amount to more than the sum which the major offered to any one who would reveal it. He came to one of the sergeants of the grenadiers and told him to pick out ten of the men who would be most likely to inform, but instead of doing so, I think the sergeant must have chosen the ten worst rogues in the company. These were then all marched off to the major's quarters, and had in one by one to see him, as he sat with five guineas lying on his table, which he offered to the first who should reveal the mystery: but finding, after he had interviewed about three of them, that he was being duped, for they all told the same tale, that was that they knew nothing about the money, he was so enraged that he told them all to go about their business, saying that they were all a set of thieves, and next time he saw the colonel he had to own, much to the amusement both of the latter and of the whole regiment, that he had been beaten in his knowing undertaking.