"What, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, though I knew well enough what it was. I wanted him to say, and have done with it; his circumlocution was getting wearisome. But he was one of those old men who won't allow their cattle to be hurried, and he went on in his long-winded way. "You'll be aware," he continued, "that there's a deal of gorse and bramble growing right down to the very edge of the coast thereabouts, Middlebrook. Scrub--that sort o' thing. The stuff that if it catches anything loose, anything protruding from say, the pocket of a garment, 'll lay hold and stick to it. Aye, well, on one of those bushes, gorse or bramble I cannot rightly say which, just within the entrance to the plantation, I saw, fluttering in the morning breeze that came sharp and refreshing off the face of the water, a handkerchief. And there was two sorts o' stains on it--caused in the one case by mud--the soft mud of the adjacent beach--and in the other by blood. A smear of blood--as if somebody had wiped blood off his fingers, you'll understand. But it was not that, not the blood, made me give my particular attention to the thing, which I'd picked off with my thumb and finger. It was that I saw at once that this was no common man's property, for there was a crest woven into one corner, and a monogram of initials underneath it, and the stuff itself was a sort that I'm unfamiliar with--it wasn't linen, though it looked like it, and it wasn't silk, for I'm well acquainted with that fabric--maybe it was a mixture of the two, but it had not been woven or made in any British factory: the thing, Middlebrook, was of foreign origin." "What were the markings you speak of?" I asked. "Well, I tell you there was a crest; anyhow it was a coronet, or that make of a thing," he answered. "Woven in one corner--I mean worked in by hand. And the letters beneath it were a V and a de--small, that last--and a C. Man! that handkerchief was the property of some man of quality! And the stains being wet--the mud-stains, at any rate, though the smear of blood was dry--I gathered that it had been but recently deposited, by accident, where I found it. I reckoned it up this way, d'ye see, Middlebrook--the man who'd left it there had used it on the beach--maybe he'd cut his toe, bathing, or something o' that sort, or likely a cut finger, gathering a shell or a fossil--and had thrust it carelessly into a side-pocket, for a thorn to catch hold of as he passed. But there it was, and there I found it." "And what did you do with it, Mr. Cazalette?" I inquired with seeming innocence.