"Intruder—derr-rr-r—whirr-rrr-rr-r! Place—pla-aay-ayy ay-ay!"
"One feels indecent in being here," agreed Nikka.
Hugh frowned down upon the two skeletons.
"They wouldn't mind," he said. "We have a reason for coming."
And while the echoes had their will with his declaration, he led us slowly around the circuit of the chamber.
Niche followed niche. On shelf after shelf lay the bones of men and women whose bodies had rotted ages ago. On one moldered the skeleton of a man in clerical raiment, with what had been a miter on his skull, some cadet of the house who had entered the Church.
Halfway around we came to another shelf that held two skeletons. The inner, obviously a woman's, thrust its poor bones through the tattered fabric that robed it. The man wore an immense pot-helmet of the early type, with eye-holes and nasals drilled in the fashion of a cross. His chainmail was very finely-woven, and included mail shoes that had collapsed pathetically on crumbled bones. His gauntleted hands were clasped on the hilt of a long, two-edged sword, which lay upon his chest with the point between his feet. His left arm supported a kite-shaped shield that revealed traces of color beneath the over-lying dust.
On his chest, just above the clasped hands, was an iron box identical with the one which we had found behind the panel of the over-mantle, the second of the "two boxes of Flanders iron" which Conrad had furnished to Lady Jane.
Hugh switched his torch on the base of the shelf. In rough, angular Gothic characters we spelt the inscription:
Hic Jacet
Hugh Dominus Chesbiensis
et
Edith Domina Chesbiensis