‘I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she’s got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.’ ‘Very like it!’ said Charley--‘calling such a chestful as this rubbish!’ ‘I am pleased enough to possess it,’ I said; ‘but if they had been such books as some of those at the Hall--’ ‘Look here, then,’ he said, stooping over the chest, and with some difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but had not yet examined--‘just see what you can make of that.’ I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was written--‘Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.’ Then followed what I will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty room hugging the folio. ‘Have you lost your senses?’ said Charley; but when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself-- ‘Well, Charley, what are you finding there?’ I asked. ‘Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,’ he answered; ‘proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.’ ‘You don’t mean I’m of the same blood as--as Geoffrey Brotherton!’ I said. ‘I would rather not, if it’s the same to you, Charley.’ ‘I can’t help it: that’s the way things point,’ he answered, throwing down the parchment. ‘But I can’t read more now. Let’s go and have a walk. I’ll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.’ ‘I’ll stop with you.’ [Illustration: “Well. Charley. What are you finding there?” I asked.] ‘No, you won’t. You’ll go and get on with your library. I shall do better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as well!’ ‘But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look here, though,’ I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal. ‘Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at the Hall.’ ‘That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!’