A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head, and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice-- “Amen!” And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny. CONCLUSION. There was a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness. That is the deuce of it. Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not unscrupulously--not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr. Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim--probably at considerable expense to both sides--to do what was already, by its own decreeing, indubitably his. But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure until it could be proved well-gotten. So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace, sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner. In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic impedimenta, which--after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a verdict of accidental death--were consigned to rest in the churchyard--Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the village--with the entire country-side, to boot--subsided from its fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary recrudescence in the _cause célebre_ which came presently to provide the epilogue. One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box, well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room--where it had lain perdu since its discovery--mounted that and Joshua in the vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.