“Grim circumstance forced me to write to you as I did.  Forgive me, I beg of you.  If it is true what Mr. Flockart says, then send me a telegram, and come here to see me.  If it be false, then I shall know by your silence.

“I love you, my own, my well-beloved! Au revoir, my dearest heart.  I look at your photograph which to-night smiles at me.  Yes, you love me!

“With many fond and sweet kisses like those I gave you in the well-remembered days of our happiness.

“My love—­My king!”

She read the letter carefully through, placed it in an envelope, and, marking it private, addressed it to Walter’s chambers in the Temple, whence she knew it must be forwarded if he were away.  Then, putting on her tam o’ shanter, she went out to the village grocer’s, where she posted it, so that it left by the early morning mail.  When would his welcome telegram arrive?  She calculated that he would get the letter by mid-day, and by one o’clock she could receive his reply—­his reassurance of love.

So she went to her bed, with its white dimity hangings, more calm and composed than for months before.  For a long time she lay awake, thinking of him, listening hour by hour to the chiming bells of the old Norman church.  They marked the passing of the night.  Then she dropped off to sleep, to be awakened by the sun streaming into the room.

That same morning, away up in the Highlands at Glencardine, Sir Henry had groped his way across the library to his accustomed chair, and Hill had placed before him one of the shallow drawers of the cabinet of seal-impressions.

There were fully half a dozen which had been sent to him by the curator of the museum at Norwich, sulphur-casts of seals recently acquired by that institution.

The blind man had put aside that morning to examine them, and settled himself to his task with the keen and pleasurable anticipation of the expert.

They were very fine specimens.  The blind man, sitting alone, selected one, and, fingering it very carefully for a long time, at last made out its design and the inscription upon it.

“The seal of Abbot Simon de Luton, of the early thirteenth century,” he said slowly to himself.  “The wolf guards the head of St. Edmund as it does in the seal of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, while the Virgin with the Child is over the canopy.  And the verse is indeed curious for its quaintness:” 

+ VIRGO .  DEUM .  FERT .  DUX .  CAPUD .  AUFERT .  QUOD .  LUPUS .  HIC .  FERT +

Then he again retraced the letters with his sensitive fingers to reassure himself that he had made no mistake.

The next he drew towards him proved to be the seal of the Vice-Warden of the Grey Friars of Cambridge, a pointed one used about the year 1244, which to himself he declared, in heraldic language, to bear the device of “a cross raguly debruised by a spear, and a crown of thorns in bend dexter, and a sponge on a staff in bend sinister, between two threefold flagella in base”—­surely a formidable array of the instruments used in the Passion.