The owner of this badge with ancient letters had not idly accepted them, or jumped at the conclusion that it was a decoration of honor for his ancestor. He had searched its history long, and he had found in Hall’s _Chronicles of the Pageants and Progress of the English Kings_ ample reference to similar letters, but not as pauper’s badges. Indeed, like many another well-read and intelligent person, he had never heard of pauper’s badges. He read:— “In this garden was the King and five with him apparyelled in garments of purpull satyn, every edge garnished with frysed golde and every garment full of posyes made of letters of fine gold, of bullion as thick as might be. And six Ladyes wore rochettes rouled with crymosyn velvet and set with lettres like Carettes. And after the Kyng and his compaignions had daunsed, he appointed the Ladies, Gentlewomen, and Ambassadours to take the lettres off their garments in token of liberalyte. Which thing the common people perceiving, ranne to them and stripped them. And at this banket a shypman of London caught certayn lettres which he sould to a goldsmith for £;3. 14s. 8d.” All this was pleasing to the vanity of our friend, who fancied his letters as having taken part in a like pageant; perhaps as a gift of the king himself. We must remember that he believed his badge of pure gold. He did not know it was a base metal, plated. He proudly pictured his forbears taking part in some kingly pageant. He scorned so modern and commonplace a possibility as a society like Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, which was formed of Virginian gentlefolk. It plainly was a relic of some romance, and in the strangely picturesque events of the early years in this New World need not, though a pauper’s badge, have been a badge of dishonor. What strange event or happening, or scene had it overlooked? Why had it been covered with its golden sheet? Was it in defiance or in satire, in remorse, or in revenge, or in humble and grateful recognition of some strange and protecting Providence? We shall never know. It was certainly not an agreeable discovery, to think that your great-grandmother or grandfather had probably been branded as a public pauper; but there were strange exiles and strange paupers in those days, exiles through political parties, through the disfavor of kings, through religious conviction, and the pauper of the golden badge, the pauper of “St. J. Psh.,” may have ended his days as vestryman of that very church. Certain it was, that no ordinary pauper would have, or could have, thus preserved it; and from similar reverses and glorifying equally base objects came the subjects of half the crests of English heraldry. Pocahontas. Pocahontas.