were written by no very practised hand, in rough and scattered characters. She made it out at length, however, to be merely "My Ella's dowry;" and a tear fell upon it as she read. She thought that the handwriting was her father's. She then looked at the ring, and saw by its lustre that it must be of some value; but a strip of leather which was sewn round the gold caught her eye, and she found it, too, traced with some rude characters. They only expressed a date, however, which was 21 July, 1403, and what it meant she knew not. Opening the parchment packet, she then proceeded to examine of what her little dowry consisted; and, to her surprise and joy, she found forty broad pieces of gold. "Nay," she exclaimed, "this is, indeed, wealth; why, I am endowed like a knight's daughter." And well might she say so; for when we remember the difference between the value of gold in that day and at present, the amount she now possessed,--what with the sum she had just found, and the penalty imposed by the King on Simeon of Roydon,--was equal to some six or seven hundred pounds. "I shall have enough to follow him for ten years," said Ella Brune, gazing on the gold, "without being a charge to any one; and then there may still remain sufficient to gain me admission to a nunnery. But I will lay it by carefully:" and placing all the gold she had, except the few pieces that had been loose in the pouch, into the parchment which had contained her dowry, she tied it up again carefully, and restored it to its place. "Yet I will be avaricious," she said. "I will disencumber myself of everything I do not want, and change it into coin.--Shall I sell this ring? No; it may mean something I do not know. 'Tis easily carried, and might create suspicion if I disposed of it here. Perhaps my cousin at Peronne can tell me more about it. How shall I sell the other things? Nay, I will ask the hostess to do it for me. She will think of her own payment, and will do it well!" After carefully putting back the ring and the money, she opened the door of the room, and called down the stairs, "Hostess, hostess! Mistress Trenchard!" "Coming, coming, little maid," said the good dame, from below. "Do not be in haste; I am with you in a minute;" and, after keeping Ella waiting for a short time, more to make herself of importance than because she had anything else to do, she came panting up the stairs, closed the door, and seated herself on the side of the low bed. "Well, my poor Ella," she said, "what want you with me? Yours is a sad case, indeed, poor thing. My husband and I both said, when you and poor old Murdock Brune went away to foreign lands, leaving your own good country behind you, that harm would come of it."