"But the 'trase' she speaks of?" I queried.
"Nobody has ever found it—unless Lord James did so."
"What is that on the back of the paper?" Nikka asked.
"The lady seems also to have been a poetess," said Mr. Bellowes with a smile. "They are some lines she scrawled, apparently without any reference to the matter on the other side."
Nikka turned the paper over. The lines were scrawled, as the lawyer had said, diagonally across the sheet, as if in a moment of abstraction:
Putte downe ye Anciount riddel
In Decente, Seemelie ordour.
Rouse, O ye mystic Sybil,
Vex hymme who doth Endeavour,
Nor treate Hys efortte tendour.
"A farrago of antique spelling and nonsense," commented Hugh. "That gets us no farther."
"Still, I suggest we take a copy of it with us," said Nikka.