“I hope you secured the documents?” cried Hankes, eagerly.
“Yes, sir; here they are, box and all. The Rector advised me to carry them away for security' sake.” And so saying, she laid upon the table a massively bound and strong-built box, of about a foot in length.
It was with no inexperienced hand that Mr. Hankes proceeded to investigate the contents. His well-practised eye rapidly caught the meaning of each paper as he lifted it up, and he continued to mutter to himself his comments upon them. “This document is an ancient grant of the lands of Cloughrennin to the monks of the Abbey of Castlerosse, and bears date 1104. It speaks of certain rights reserved to the Baron Hugh Pritchard Conway. Conway—Conway,” mumbled he, twice or thrice; “that's the very name I tried and could not remember yesterday, Miss Kellett. You asked me about a certain soldier whose daring capture of a Russian officer was going the round of the papers. The young fellow had but one arm too; now I remember, his name was Conway.”
“Charles Conway! Was it Charles Conway?” cried she, eagerly; “but it could be no other,—he had lost his right arm.”
“I 'm not sure which, but he had only one, and he was called an orderly on the staff of the Piedmontese General.”
“Oh, the noble fellow! I could have sworn he would distinguish himself. Tell me it all again, sir; where did it happen, and how, and when?”
Mr. Hankes's memory was now to be submitted to a very searching test, and he was called on to furnish details which might have puzzled “Our own Correspondent.” Had Charles Conway been rewarded for his gallantry? What notice had his bravery elicited? Was he promoted, and to what rank? Had he been decorated, and with what order? Were his wounds, as reported, only trifling? Where was he now?—was he in hospital or on service? She grew impatient at how little he knew,—how little the incident seemed to have impressed him. “Was it possible,” she asked, “that heroism like this was so rife that a meagre paragraph was deemed enough to record it,—a paragraph, too, that forgot to state what had become of its hero?”
“Why, my dear Miss Kellett,” interposed he, at length, “one reads a dozen such achievements every week.”
“I deny it, sir,” cried she, angrily. “Our soldiers are the bravest in the world; they possess a courage that asks no aid from the promptings of self-interest, nor the urgings of vanity; they are very lions in combat; but it needs the chivalrous ardor of the gentleman, the man of blood and lineage to conceive a feat like this. It was only a noble patriotism could suggest the thought of such an achievement.”
“I must say,” said Hankes, in confusion, “the young fellow acquitted himself admirably; but I would also beg to observe that there is nothing in the newspaper to lead to the conclusion you are disposed to draw. There's not a word of his being a gentleman.”