‘You may put them where you like, sir,’ answered William Henry smiling, as he always did when addressed by that unwonted name; ‘they are yours.’ ‘A good lad, an excellent lad,’ murmured the antiquary; ‘now let us with all due reverence inspect these treasures. This is the very hair I should have looked for as having been the immortal bard’s, just as the engraving by Droeshart depicts it in the folio edition. Brown, straight, and wiry, as Steevens terms it.’ ‘I should not call it wiry, uncle,’ observed Margaret, ‘though to be sure it has no curl nor gloss on it; it seems to me soft enough to have been a woman’s hair.’ ‘It is, perhaps, a trifle silkier and more effeminate than the description would warrant,’ returned the antiquary, ‘but that is doubtless due to the mellowing effects of time. It may be so far looked upon as corroborative evidence. In that connection, by-the-bye, let me draw your particular attention to the braid with which the hair is fastened. This woven silk is not of to-day’s workmanship. I recognise it as being of the same kind used in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth for attaching the royal seal to patents: a most interesting circumstance, and one which, were there any doubt of the genuineness of the hair, might, like the impress of the quintin in the case of the Hemynge deed, be reasonably adduced as an undesigned coincidence. Then to think that we have it under his own hand that Shakespeare’s fingers have knotted it. Read his words once again, my son, before we put the priceless treasure by.’ ‘“I doe assure thee no rude hand hath knottedde itte, thye Willys alone hath done the worke.”’ ‘How tender, how touching!’ exclaimed the antiquary. ‘We seem to be in his very presence. What a privilege has this day been vouchsafed to us, my children!’ The two young people glanced at one another involuntarily as the old man addressed them by this title. It is probable that Mr. Erin attached no particular meaning to it. It may have been only the expression of the measureless content he felt with both of them; with his son for what he had brought him, and with his niece for the readiness with which she had resigned what he had brought to his own custody. But to their ears it had a deep significance.