d
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.

Deeply interested, and speaking to himself aloud, as was his habit when
alone, he examined them one after the other. Among the collection were
the seals of Berengar de Brolis, Plebanus of Pacina (in Syracuse), and
those of the Commune of Beauvais (1228); Mathilde (or Mahaut), daughter
of Henri Duke of Brabant (1265); the town of Oudenbourg in West
Flanders, and of the Vicar-Provincial of the Carmelite Order at Palermo
(1350); Jacobus de Gnapet, Bishop of Rennes (1480); and of Bondi Marquis
of Sasolini of Bo