Chapter 44

HERMETICALLY SEALED

The discovery which I have described above (but not half so well as the miller tells it now) created in my young heart a feeling of really strong curiosity. To begin with, how could this valuable thing have got into the Moon-stream, and lain there so long, unsought for, or at best so unskillfully sought for? What connection could it have with the tragic death of my grandfather? Why was that man so tardily come to search for it, if he might do so without any body near him? Again, what woman was this whose beauty no water or mud could even manage to disguise? That last was a most disturbing question to one's bodily peace of mind. And then came another yet more urgent--what was in the inside of this tight case?

That there was something inside of it seemed almost a certainty. The mere value of the trinket, or even the fear that it ever might turn up as evidence, would scarcely have brought that man so often to stir suspicion by seeking it; though, after so long a time, he well might hope that suspicion was dead and buried. And being unable to open this case--after breaking three good nails over it, and then the point of a penknife--I turned to Master Withypool, who was stamping on the grass to drain himself.

"What sort of a man was that," I asked, "who wanted you to do what now you have so kindly done for me? About a month or six weeks ago? Do please to tell me, as nearly as you can."

If Mrs. Withypool had been there, she might have lost all patience with me for putting long questions so selfishly to a man who had done so much for me, and whose clothes were now dripping in a wind which had arisen to test his theory of drying. He must have lost a large quantity of what scientific people call "caloric." But never a shiver gave he in exchange.

"Well, miss," he said, "I was thinking a'most of speaking on that very matter. More particular since you found that little thing, with the pretty lady inside of it. It were borne in on my mind that thissom were the very thing he were arter."

"No doubt of it," I answered, with far less patience, though being comparatively dry. "But what was he like? Was he like this portrait?"

"This picture of the lady? No; I can't say that he were, so much. The face of a big man he hath, with short black fringes to it. Never showeth to my idea any likeliness of a woman. No, no, miss; think you not at all that you have got him in that blue thing. Though some of their pictures is like men, the way they dress up nowadays."

"I did not mean that it was meant for him; what I mean is, do you see any sign of family likeness? Any resemblance about the eyes, or mouth, or forehead?"

"Well, now, I don't know but what I might," replied Master Withypool, gazing very hard; "if I was to look at 'un long enough, a' might find