one who would have the
wit to distinguish it from a rotten stick. At all events it had found a
port at last.

The bottle had been corked and then sealed with pitch, and Constans had
to use some care in getting at its contents, a slender cylinder of
tightly rolled paper. Finally he succeeded in drawing it out uninjured,
and saw that it was superscribed to his uncle Hugolin.

The old man looked up with a frown as Constans presented himself at the
door of the counting-room. The rest hour was over and Constans's place
was at the tan-pit. How was the work to get done if everybody shirked
their part of the common task? A message in a bottle. What foolery was
this? Nevertheless, Messer Hugolin extended his hand to receive the
roll, and, removing the waxed string that bound it, knit his brows over
the enclosure--half a dozen sheets of writing. Constans was about to
retire discreetly, but Messer Hugolin raised his hand.

"The writing is too fine for my eyes," he grumbled. "Read it for me,
nephew; but, harkee! you will keep your mouth shut whatever its import."
Then, in a sudden gust of passion: "A thousand plagues on that fool of
an up-river factor who broke for me my reading-glass! Not another one to
be had in Croye for good-will or gold, and I compelled to borrow
another's eyes, to live at the mercy of my meanest clerk. Come, boy, you
must have the sense of it by this time!"

"Shall I read it aloud?" asked Constans, and then, in compliance with
his uncle's nod, he began:

"'Dated at Doom, in the year 90 after the Great Change.

"'It is a score of years my brother, since that moonless August
night when the Doomsmen came to Croye and I went back with them,
tied to Mad Scarlett's saddle-bow. Twenty years of silence in the
City of Silence, and I but a slim, brown-faced maid who might be
found one day playing at polo and lamenting her lack of mustachios,
and on the very next, mooning over a love charm. It was only
through the look in my cousin Philip's eyes, as he died under the
weight of the Doomsmen battle-axes, that I knew myself a woman,
that I finally entered upon my sex's heritage of sorrow.

"'Does this seem an old and hardly remembered tale to you, Anthony
Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, and a rich man, if one may
judge from the yearly tax rate that stands opposite your name in
Dom Gillian's head list? Withal, you are still my brother, and you