relics on my knee. The metal of each was
tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old
cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its parti-coloured sling, though
frayed and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath
its cracked brown varnish, I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms,
and a legend running--_Per Mare per Terram_--the motto of the
Marines. Its parchment, though coloured and scented with wood-smoke,
was limp and mildewed; and I began to tighten up the straps--under
which the drumsticks had been loosely thrust--with the idle purpose
of trying if some music might be got out of the old drum yet.

But as I turned it on my knee, I found the drum attached to the
trumpet-sling by a curious barrel-shaped padlock, and paused to
examine this. The body of the lock was composed of half a dozen
brass rings, set accurately edge to edge; and, rubbing the brass with
my thumb, I saw that each of the six had a series of letters engraved
around it.

I knew the trick of it, I thought. Here was one of those
word-padlocks, once so common; only to be opened by getting the rings
to spell a certain word, which the dealer confides to you.

My host shut and barred the door, and came back to the hearth.

"'Twas just such a wind--east by south--that brought in what you've
got between your hands. Back in the year 'nine it was; my father has
told me the tale a score o' times. You're twisting round the rings,
I see. But you'll never guess the word. Parson Kendall, he made the
word, and locked down a couple o' ghosts in their graves with it; and
when his time came, he went to his own grave and took the word with
him."

"Whose ghosts, Matthew?"

"You want the story, I see, sir. My father could tell it better than
I can. He was a young man in the year 'nine, unmarried at the time,
and living in this very cottage just as I be. That's how he came to
get mixed up with the tale."

He took a chair, lit a short pipe, and unfolded the story in a low
musing voice, with his eyes fixed on the dancing violet flames.

"Yes, he'd ha' been about thirty year old in January, of the year
'nine. The storm got up in the night o' the twenty-first o' that
month. My father was dressed and out long before daylight; he never
was one to 'bide in bed, let be that the gale by this time was pretty
near lifting the thatch over his head. Besides which, he'd fenced a
small 'taty-patch that winter, down by Lowland Poin