lasp tarnished,
but of silver. Mrs. Oakshott seized it at once, rubbed away the
dust from the handle, and brought to light a glistening yellow piece
of amber, which she mutely held up, and another touch of her
handkerchief disclosed on a silver plate in the scabbard an oak-
tree, the family crest, and the twisted cypher P. O. Her eyes were
full of tears, and she did not speak. Anne, white and trembling,
was forced to sink down on the stone, unnoticed by all, while Robert
Oakshott, convinced indeed, hastily went down himself. The sword
had been hidden in a sort of hollow under the remains of the broken
stair. Thence likewise came to light the mouldy remnant of a broad
hat and the quill of its plume, and what had once been a coat, even
in its present state showing that it had been soaked through and
through with blood, the same stains visible on the watch and the
mosaic snuff-box. That was all; there was no purse, and no other
garments, though, considering the condition of the coat, they might
have been entirely destroyed by the rats and mice. There was indeed
a fragment of a handkerchief, with the cypher worked on it, which
Mrs. Oakshott showed to Anne with the tears in her eyes: "There! I
worked that, though he never knew it. No! I know he did not like
me! But I would have made him do so at last. I would have been so
good to him. Poor fellow, that he should have been lying there all
this time!"

Lying there; but where, then, was he? No signs of any corpse were
to be found, though one after another all the gentlemen descended to
look, and Mrs. Oakshott was only withheld by her husband's urgent
representations, and promise to superintend a diligent digging in
the ground, so as to ascertain whether there had been a hasty burial
there.

Altogether, Anne was so much astonished and appalled that she could
hardly restrain herself, and her mind reverted to Bishop Ken's
theory that Peregrine still lived; but this was contradicted by the
appearance at Douai, which did not rest on the evidence of her
single perceptions.

Mrs. Fellowes sent out an entreaty that they would come to dinner,
and the gentlemen were actually base enough to wish to comply, so
that the two ladies had no choice save to come with them, especially
as the soldiers were unwilling to work on without their meal.
Neither Mrs. Oakshott nor Anne felt as if they could swallow, and
the polite pressure to eat was only preferable in Anne's eyes to th