“Ye are robbers all,” cried Bartholomew: “you cheated him in his weakness into signing his property away from the friend who smoothed his pillow in his dying hours.” “Thou naughty knave,” retorted the Master, “talk not to me of bricks and straw. It was gold that was contained in thy box, and the devil knows by what scurvy arts thou didst cozen us of our promised reward. His own paper convicts thee of the fraudulent attempt to get him to will his goods to thee. See what he left in the bottom of our box.” And the Master threw the scrap above-transcribed upon the table. “Take it and never let me see thy rogue’s face again.” Brother Bartholomew leaped in his skin as he grabbed the document. He made no ceremony of leave-taking, but bolted down the stairs. When he got into the cloister outside he took from his pouch a dingy scrap of paper, which was the fellow of that which the Master had thrown to him. What he read on it was this: Sciant omnes presentes et futuri quod er Hospitalis Divi Johannis apud Canteb doctori Ecclyston et sociis Collegii Jes one equaliter inter se dividendum aut ri meo in antedicto Hospitali ea racio it totum thesaurum meum ita ut extat cl dam lapidem iacentem in septentrionali eiusdem cuius istud signum extat a dea Then brother Bartholomew put the two pieces together, and it was thus that he translated the continuous lines: Know all men present and to come that | I, John Baldwin, late a broth er of the Hospital of Saint John at Camb | ridge, give, grant and bequeath to master doctor Eccleston and the fellows of the College of Jes | u for my relief during sick ness, equally to be divided among them, or | to master Bartholomew Aspelon, a brother of mine in the aforesaid Hospital, provid | ed that he shall have it who is first fin der, all my treasure as it now lies pri | vily buried in a tomb under a cert ain stone lying on the northern | side of the choir in the chapel of the Hospital aforesaid, of which this is the sign, a dea | th’s head. Of what further pertains to brother John Baldwin and his bequest I have no more to say than that his name is not included in the Form for the Commemoration of Benefactors of Jesus College. Also that for twenty years after the events here recorded a cheerful individual, in a lay habit, might be seen, seated of custom on the ale-bench at the Sarazin’s Head. He drank of the best, paid in cash and never lacked for money. He could tell a good tale and he sang a good song. His Wassail song was always in request at the Sarazin’s Head. The Burden of Dead Books