for it to-morrow morning. Lock it now and give me the key."

In due course the chest arrived, and I examined the bundle for the other
contents do not matter, although some of them were interesting. Pinned
inside the shawl I found a paper, undated and unsigned, but which from
the character and style of the writing was, I should say, penned by a
lady about sixty years ago. It ran thus:--

"My late father, who was such a great traveller in his young days and so
fond of exploring strange places, brought these things home from one of
his journeys before his marriage, I think from South America. He told
me once that the dress was found upon the body of a woman in a tomb and
that she must have been a great lady, for she was surrounded by a number
of other women, perhaps her servants who were brought to be buried with
her here when they died. They were all seated about a stone table at the
end of which were the remains of a man. My father saw the bodies near
the ruins of some forest city, in the tomb over which was heaped a great
mound of earth. That of the lady, which had a kind of shroud made of the
skins of long-wooled sheep wrapped about it as though to preserve the
dress beneath, had been embalmed in some way, which the natives of the
place, wherever it was, told him showed that she was royal. The others
were mere skeletons, held together by the skin, but the man had a long
fair beard and hair still hanging to his skull, and by his side was a
great cross-hilted sword that crumbled to fragments when it was touched,
except the hilt and the knob of amber upon it which had turned almost
black with age. I think my father said that the packet of skins or
parchment of which the underside is badly rotted with damp was set under
the feet of the man. He told me that he gave those who found the tomb a
great deal of money for the dress, gold ornaments, and emerald necklace,
as nothing so perfect had been found before, and the cloth is all worked
with gold thread. My father told me, too, that he did not wish the
things to be sold."

This was the end of the writing.

Having read it I examined the dress. It was of a sort that I had never
seen before, though experts to whom I have shown it say that it is
certainly South American of a very early date, and like the ornaments,
probably pre-Inca Peruvian. It is full of rich colours such as I have
seen in old Indian shawls which give a general effect of crimson. This
crimson robe clear