l, if you must know, I was born on August
the thirtieth."

"To-day! Oh, Adele. And I've nothing for you Except...." I hesitated,
and my heart began to beat very fast. "But I'd be ashamed--I mean...."
My voice petered out helplessly. I braced myself for a supreme
effort....

An impatient yelp rang out.

"What's the matter with Nobby?" said Adele in a voice I hardly
recognized.

"Fed up, 'cause I've lost his ball for him," said I, and, cowardly glad
of a respite, I rose and stepped to the aged riot of ivy, where the
terrier was searching for his toy.

I pulled a hole in the arras and peered through.

There was more space than I had expected. The grey wall bellied away
from me.

"What's that?" said Adele, looking over my shoulder.

"What?" said I.

"There. To the right."

It was dark under the ivy, so I thrust in a groping arm.

Almost at once my hand encountered the smooth edge of masonry.

I took out a knife and ripped away some trails, so that we could see
better.

There was nothing to show that the pedestal which my efforts revealed
had ever supported a statue. But it was plain that such was the office
for which it had been set up. Presumably it was one of the series which,
according to Vandy's book, had displayed imaginative effigies of the
Roman Emperors, and had been done away in 1710. The inscription upon the
cornice upheld this conclusion.

PERTINAX IMPERATOR.

I looked at Adele.

"PER ... IMP ..." said I. "Does the cap fit?"

"Yes," she said simply. "That's right. I remember it perfectly. The
other seemed likely, but I was never quite sure." Trembling a little,
she turned and looked round. "And you came out of that break in the
hedge with the tomato, and----Oh!"

She stopped, and the colour came flooding into her cheeks....

Then, in a flash, she turned and sped down the alley like a wild thing.
As in a dream, I watched the tall slim figure dart out of sight....

A second impatient yelp reminded me that Nobby was still waiting.

* * * * *

The firm of silversmiths whom we employed to clean the collection, after
it had been disinterred, valued it for purposes of insurance at
twenty-two thousand pounds.

We saw no reason to communicate with Vandy. The exercise was probably
doing him good, and he had shown a marked antipathy to interruption. A
tent had been pitched at The Lawn, and the work of excavation went
steadily on. Not until the twenty-eighth of S