At last Long said: “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I seem impertinent, but are you _quite_ sure you’ve got it?” I was wanting to ask much the same question myself, for of course the story did seem a lunatic’s dream when one thought over it. But I hadn’t quite dared to say what might hurt the poor young man’s feelings. However he took it quite calmly--really, with the calm of despair, you might say. He sat up and said: “Oh yes, there’s no doubt of that: I have it here, in my room, locked up in my bag. You can come and look at it if you like: I won’t offer to bring it here.” We were not likely to let the chance slip. We went with him; his room was only a few doors off. The boots was just collecting shoes in the passage: or so we thought: afterwards we were not sure. Our visitor--his name was Paxton--was in a worse state of shivers than before, and went hurriedly into the room, and beckoned us after him, turned on the light, and shut the door carefully. Then he unlocked his kit-bag, and produced a bundle of clean pocket-handkerchiefs in which something was wrapped, laid it on the bed, and undid it. I can now say I _have_ seen an actual Anglo-Saxon crown. It was of silver--as the Rendlesham one is always said to have been--it was set with some gems, mostly antique intaglios and cameos, and was of rather plain, almost rough workmanship. In fact, it was like those you see on the coins and in the manuscripts. I found no reason to think it was later than the ninth century. I was intensely interested, of course, and I wanted to turn it over in my hands, but Paxton prevented me. “Don’t _you_ touch it,” he said, “I’ll do that.” And with a sigh that was, I declare to you, dreadful to hear, he took it up and turned it about so that we could see every part of it. “Seen enough?” he said at last, and we nodded. He wrapped it up and locked it in his bag, and stood looking at us dumbly. “Come back to our room,” Long said, “and tell us what the trouble is.” He thanked us, and said: “Will you go first and see if--if the coast is clear?” That wasn’t very intelligible, for our proceedings hadn’t been, after all, very suspicious, and the hotel, as I said, was practically empty. However, we were beginning to have inklings of--we didn’t know what, and anyhow nerves are infectious. So we did go, first peering out as we opened the door, and fancying (I found we both had the fancy) that a shadow, or more than a shadow--but it made no sound--passed from before us to one side as we came out into the passage. “It’s all right,” we whispered to Paxton--whispering seemed the proper tone--and we went, with him between us, back to our sitting-room. I was preparing, when we got there, to be ecstatic about the unique interest of what we had seen, but when I looked at Paxton I saw that would be terribly out of place, and I left it to him to begin.