he miller tells it now) created in my young heart a feeling of really
strong curiosity. To begin with, how could this valuable thing have got
into the Moon-stream, and lain there so long, unsought for, or at best
so unskillfully sought for? What connection could it have with the
tragic death of my grandfather? Why was that man so tardily come to
search for it, if he might do so without any body near him? Again,
what woman was this whose beauty no water or mud could even manage to
disguise? That last was a most disturbing question to one's bodily peace
of mind. And then came another yet more urgent--what was in the inside
of this tight case?

That there was something inside of it seemed almost a certainty. The
mere value of the trinket, or even the fear that it ever might turn
up as evidence, would scarcely have brought that man so often to stir
suspicion by seeking it; though, after so long a time, he well might
hope that suspicion was dead and buried. And being unable to open this
case--after breaking three good nails over it, and then the point of a
penknife--I turned to Master Withypool, who was stamping on the grass to
drain himself.

"What sort of a man was that," I asked, "who wanted you to do what
now you have so kindly done for me? About a month or six weeks ago? Do
please to tell me, as nearly as you can."

If Mrs. Withypool had been there, she might have lost all patience with
me for putting long questions so selfishly to a man who had done so much
for me, and whose clothes were now dripping in a wind which had arisen
to test his theory of drying. He must have lost a large quantity of
what scientific people call "caloric." But never a shiver gave he in
exchange.

"Well, miss," he said, "I was thinking a'most of speaking on that very
matter. More particular since you found that little thing, with the
pretty lady inside of it. It were borne in on my mind that thissom were
the very thing he were arter."

"No doubt of it," I answered, with far less patience, though being
comparatively dry. "But what was he like? Was he like this portrait?"

"This picture of the lady? No; I can't say that he were, so much. The
face of a big man he hath, with short black fringes to it. Never showeth
to my idea any likeliness of a woman. No, no, miss; think you not at all
that you have got him in that blue thing. Though some of their pictures
is like men, the way they dress up nowadays."

"I did not mean that it was meant for