haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to
murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers;
men's minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day; while
the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating itself
a title which the very elements joined with human valor to disprove,
soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance of the
nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.

Years rolled on: the "Bad Sir Giles" had himself long since gone to his
account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate line; though a
few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder
brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the
estate. Rumors, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands, were at
one time rife; but they died away, nothing occurring to support them:
the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family,
and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard,
in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone
occurred, after a long-intervening period, to revive the memory of these
transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for
the purpose of raising on its site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the
execution of their task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have
been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of
silken slashes and a coarse embroidery, to identify the relics as having
once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell
from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned
rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.

Whether the squire was more successful in deciphering them was never
known; he certainly never alluded to their contents; and little would
have been thought of the matter but for the inconvenient memory of one
old woman, who declared she heard her grandfather say, that when the
"strange guest" was poisoned, though all the rest of his clothes were
there, his breeches, the supposed repository of the supposed documents,
could never be found. The master of Tapton Everard smiled when he heard
Dame Jones's hint of deeds which might impeach the validity of his own
title in favor of some unknown descendant of some unknown heir; and the
story was rarely alluded to, save by one or two miracle-mongers, who had
heard that