seen.'"

The sheriff turned the parchment, and raised it in his right hand, to
expose it to the light.

A blank page was seen, if the word blank can be applied to a thing so
mouldy, and in the middle of the page three words were written, two
Latin words, _Jussu regis_, and a signature, _Jeffreys_.

"_Jussu regis, Jeffreys_," said the sheriff, passing from a grave voice
to a clear one.

Gwynplaine was as a man on whose head a tile falls from the palace of
dreams.

He began to speak, like one who speaks unconsciously.

"Gernardus, yes, the doctor. An old, sad-looking man. I was afraid of
him. Gaizdorra, Captain, that means chief. There were women, Asuncion,
and the other. And then the Provencal. His name was Capgaroupe. He used
to drink out of a flat bottle on which there was a name written in red."

"Behold it," said the sheriff.

He placed on the table something which the secretary had just taken out
of the bag. It was a gourd, with handles like ears, covered with wicker.
This bottle had evidently seen service, and had sojourned in the water.
Shells and seaweed adhered to it. It was encrusted and damascened over
with the rust of ocean. There was a ring of tar round its neck, showing
that it had been hermetically sealed. Now it was unsealed and open. They
had, however, replaced in the flask a sort of bung made of tarred oakum,
which had been used to cork it.

"It was in this bottle," said the sheriff, "that the men about to perish
placed the declaration which I have just read. This message addressed to
justice has been faithfully delivered by the sea."

The sheriff increased the majesty of his tones, and continued,--

"In the same way that Harrow Hill produces excellent wheat, which is
turned into fine flour for the royal table, so the sea renders every
service in its power to England, and when a nobleman is lost finds and
restores him."

Then he resumed,--

"On this flask, as you say, there is a name written in red."

He raised his voice, turning to the motionless prisoner,--

"Your name, malefactor, is here. Such are the hidden channels by which
truth, swallowed up in the gulf of human actions, floats to the
surface."

The sheriff took the gourd, and turned to the light one of its sides,
which had, no doubt, been cleaned for the ends of justice. Between the
interstices of wicker was a narrow line of red reed, blackened here and
there by the action of water and of time.

The reed, notwithstanding