"They are inventories!" I exclaimed. "Both. Written in crabbed caligraphy, too, but easy enough to read if you're acquainted with sixteenth century penmanship, spelling and abbreviations. Look at the first one. It is here described as an inventory of all the jewels, plate, et cetera, appertaining and belonging unto the Abbey of Forestburne, and it was made in the year 1536--this abbey, therefore, was one of the smaller houses that came under the £200 limit and was accordingly suppressed in the year just mentioned. Now look at the second. It also is an inventory--of the jewels and plate of the Priory of Mellerton, made in the same year, and similarly suppressed. But though both these houses were of the smaller sort, it is quite evident, from a cursory glance at these inventories that they were pretty rich in jewels and plate. By the term jewels is meant plate wherein jewels were set; as to the plate it was, of course, the sacramental vessels and appurtenances. And judging by these entries the whole mass of plate must have been considerable!" "Worth a good deal, eh?" he asked. "A great deal!--and if it's in existence now, much more than a great deal," I replied. "But I'll read you some of the items set down here--I'll read a few haphazard. They are set down, you see, with their weight in ounces specified, and you'll observe what a number of items there are in each inventory. We'll look at just a few. A chalice, twenty-eight ounces. Another chalice, thirty-six ounces. A mazer, forty-seven ounces. One pair candlesticks, fifty-two ounces. Two cruets, thirty-one ounces. One censer, twenty-eight ounces. One cross, fifty-eight ounces. Another cross, forty-eight ounces. Three dozen spoons, forty-eight ounces. One salt, with covering, twenty-eight ounces. A great cross, seventy-two ounces. A paten, sixteen ounces. Another paten, twenty ounces. Three tablets of proper gold work, eighty-five ounces in all. And so on and so on!--a very nice collection, Scarterfield, considering that these are only a few items at random, out of some seventy or eighty altogether. But we can easily reckon up the total weight--indeed, it's already reckoned up at the foot of each inventory. At Forestburne, you see, there was a sum total of two thousand two hundred and thirty-eight ounces of plate; at Mellerton, one thousand eight hundred and seventy ounces--so these two inventories represent a mass of about four thousand ounces. Worth having, Scarterfield!--in either the sixteenth or the twentieth century." "And, in the main, it would be--what?" asked Scarterfield. "Gold, silver?" "Some of it gold, some silver, a good deal of it silver-gilt," I replied. "I can tell all that by reading the inventories more attentively. But I've told you what a mere, cursory glance shows." "Four thousand ounces of plate--some of it jewelled!" he soliloquised. "Whew! And what do you make of it, Mr. Middlebrook? I mean--of all that I've told you?"