by Campany to an inspection of certain drawings which the librarian had
made for illustrating his work-drawings, most of them, of old brasses,
coats of arms, and the like,--And at the foot of one of these, a drawing
of a shield on which was sculptured three crows, Bryce saw the name
Richard Jenkins, armiger. It was all, he could do to repress a start and
to check his tongue. But Campany, knowing nothing, quickly gave him the
information he wanted.
"All these drawings," he said, "are of old things in and about the
Cathedral. Some of them, like that, for instance, that Jenkins shield,
are of ornamentations on tombs which are so old that the inscriptions
have completely disappeared--tombs in the Cloisters, and in Paradise.
Some of those tombs can only be identified by these sculptures and
ornaments."
"How do you know, for instance, that any particular tomb or monument is,
we'll say, Jenkins's?" asked Bryce, feeling that he was on safe ground.
"Must be a matter of doubt if there's no inscription left, isn't it?"
"No!" replied Campany. "No doubt at all. In that particular case,
there's no doubt that a certain tomb out there in the corner of
Paradise, near the east wall of the south porch, is that of one Richard
Jenkins, because it bears his coat-of-arms, which, as you see, bore
these birds--intended either as crows or ravens. The inscription's clean
gone from that tomb--which is why it isn't particularized in that chart
of burials in Paradise--the man who prepared that chart didn't know
how to trace things as we do nowadays. Richard Jenkins was, as you may
guess, a Welshman, who settled here in Wrychester in the seventeenth
century: he left some money to St. Hedwige's Church, outside the
walls, but he was buried here. There are more instances--look at this,
now--this coat-of-arms--that's the only means there is of identifying
another tomb in Paradise--that of Gervase Tyrrwhit. You see his armorial
bearings in this drawing? Now those--"
Bryce let the librarian go on talking and explaining, and heard all he
had to say as a man hears things in a dream--what was really active in
his own mind was joy at this unexpected stroke of luck: he himself might
have searched for many a year and never found the last resting-place of
Richard Jenkins. And when, soon after the great clock of the Cathedral
had struck the hour of noon, he left Campany and quitted the Library, he
walked over to Paradise and plunged in amongst its yews an
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