A lantern was fetched from the guard-room in the bailey, and after much shaking and trying of the ladder, one of the soldiers descended, finding the place less deep than was commonly supposed, and soon calling out that he was at the bottom.  Another followed him, and presently there was a shout.  Something was found!  “A rusty old chain, no doubt,” grumbled Robert; but his wife shrieked.  It was a sword in its sheath, the belt rotted, the clasp tarnished, but of silver.  Mrs. Oakshott seized it at once, rubbed away the dust from the handle, and brought to light a glistening yellow piece of amber, which she mutely held up, and another touch of her handkerchief disclosed on a silver plate in the scabbard an oak-tree, the family crest, and the twisted cypher P. O. Her eyes were full of tears, and she did not speak.  Anne, white and trembling, was forced to sink down on the stone, unnoticed by all, while Robert Oakshott, convinced indeed, hastily went down himself.  The sword had been hidden in a sort of hollow under the remains of the broken stair.  Thence likewise came to light the mouldy remnant of a broad hat and the quill of its plume, and what had once been a coat, even in its present state showing that it had been soaked through and through with blood, the same stains visible on the watch and the mosaic snuff-box.  That was all; there was no purse, and no other garments, though, considering the condition of the coat, they might have been entirely destroyed by the rats and mice.  There was indeed a fragment of a handkerchief, with the cypher worked on it, which Mrs. Oakshott showed to Anne with the tears in her eyes:  “There!  I worked that, though he never knew it.  No!  I know he did not like me!  But I would have made him do so at last.  I would have been so good to him.  Poor fellow, that he should have been lying there all this time!”

Lying there; but where, then, was he?  No signs of any corpse were to be found, though one after another all the gentlemen descended to look, and Mrs. Oakshott was only withheld by her husband’s urgent representations, and promise to superintend a diligent digging in the ground, so as to ascertain whether there had been a hasty burial there.

Altogether, Anne was so much astonished and appalled that she could hardly restrain herself, and her mind reverted to Bishop Ken’s theory that Peregrine still lived; but this was contradicted by the appearance at Douai, which did not rest on the evidence of her single perceptions.

Mrs. Fellowes sent out an entreaty that they would come to dinner, and the gentlemen were actually base enough to wish to comply, so that the two ladies had no choice save to come with them, especially as the soldiers were unwilling to work on without their meal.  Neither Mrs. Oakshott nor Anne felt as if they could swallow, and the polite pressure to eat was only preferable in Anne’s eyes to the conversation on the discoveries that had been made, especially the conclusion arrived at by all, that though the purse and rings had not been found, the presence of the watch and snuff-box precluded the idea of robbery.