he general opinion was that, whatever had happened, he
could not have been to blame in the matter.

His warmest adherent was Evan Holl, who had months before been
introduced to the house as assistant knife and boot cleaner by Frank. He
did not sleep there, going home at nine o'clock in the evening when his
work was done.

"Do you know, Harry," he said, one day, "what a rum crest, as they calls
it,--I asked the butler what it meant, and he says as how it was the
crest of the family--Captain Bayley has; he's got it on his silver, and
I noticed it when I was in the pantry to-day helping the butler to clean
some silver dishes which had been lying by unused for some time. 'All
families of distinction,' the butler said,--he is mighty fond of using
hard long words--'all families of distinction,' says he, ''as got their
own crest, which belongs to them and no one else. Now this 'ere crest of
the guv'nor's is a hand holding a dagger, and the hand has only got
three fingers.' I said as how there was two missing, and that the chap
as did it couldn't have known much of his business to go and leave out
two fingers. But the butler says, 'That's your hignorance,' says he;
'the hand 'as got only three fingers because a hancestor of the
Captain's in the time of the Crusaders'---- 'And what's the Crusaders?'
says I. 'The Crusaders was a war between the English and the Americans
hundreds of years ago,' says he."

Harry burst into a shout of laughter. "Mr. Butler does not know anything
about it, for the Crusades were wars between people who went out to the
Holy Land to recover the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks who held it."

"Ah, well," Evan said, "it don't make no odds whether they was Turks or
Americans. However, the butler says as how the Captain Bayley what lived
in those days, he saw a red Injun a-crawling to stab the king, who was
a-lying asleep in his tent, and just as his hand was up to stick in the
knife, Captain Bayley he gives a cut with his sword which whips off two
of the fingers, and before the Injun could turn round and go at him he
gives another cut, and takes off his hand at the wrist, and the next cut
he takes off his head; so the hand with three fingers holding a dagger
was given him to carry as a crest. I suppose after a time the hand got
wore out, or got bad, so as he couldn't have carried it about no longer,
and instead of that, as a kind of remembrance of the affair, he 'as them
put on his forks and spoons."

Mr