We had walked during the relation of my friend's narrative along the road often travelled by me before, and which led to the three shattered elms and the old cellar. We sat down beneath the shade of the trees once more to rest, and as we did so Gault took from his pocket the old knife which two years before had been discovered in the grass-grown cellar. "There," said he, holding it before my eyes, "there is the name on the handle that you read for the first time,--'Samuel Wickham,'--and you can imagine my feelings when I tell you that that was the name of my great-grandfather. When you told me that Deacon Thompson had a record of this long past tragedy you doubtless remember the intense eagerness with which I hastened to find him. "In the diary was distinctly recorded the burning of the house, March 4, 1795. If Samuel Wickham was guilty of the crime it was utterly impossible that he should have been out of England at that time. From that moment my cherished belief became a settled conviction. My means were limited, but I resolved to visit England at once, and, if possible, substantiate the evidence found so unexpectedly under these elms; not that I expected to obtain reversal of a sentence pronounced in a court of law over eighty years ago, but Cecelia Crabshaw should know that my blood was not tainted by an ancestor's crime. I can assure you that I thought much more than I slept that night. "The next day, as you know, I went back to Boston, and a month later was in England. I went directly to S----, and there found the old mansion, once the rightful property of my great-grandfather. I found proof that he sailed for New York, January 23, 1795. But that was not all. The old Wickham mansion had stood for years unoccupied. I learned that after its forfeiture to the crown the whole estate had been granted for life as a reward to the young officer who had brought to the government the evidence of its former owner's treason. By him it was occupied for some thirty years; then he suddenly disappeared. After that the estate was sold to an eccentric and wealthy bachelor, who built a superb residence thereon, letting the old mansion remain closed. Very recently he had died, leaving no will and no heirs, and the estate again escheated to the crown. "I was very anxious to search the old mansion, and readily obtained permission to enter. It was built in the time of Elizabeth, and was a large building, similar in architecture to many others built in the sixteenth century in this part of England. As I entered the deserted building a strange feeling of desolation took possession of me. Hardly a human being had been within its walls for fifty years. The dust lay deep on the bare oaken floor, and almost muffled the sound of my footsteps. On one exquisitely carved panel appeared, in defiance of attempts to destroy it, the Wickham coat-of-arms.