Mrs. Holl had been listening with grave interest to the narrative.
"Does I understand you to say, Evan, that no other family but that of the master's put this three-fingered hand with a knife on to their things?"
"That's so, mother; leastways it's what the butler says about it."
"Then if that's the case," Mrs. Holl said thoughtfully, "any one who has got this crest, as you calls it, on his things must be a relation of the Captain."
"I suppose so, mother; he might be a long distance off, you know, because this ere affair took place hundreds of years ago, and there may be a lot of the same family about in different parts."
"So there might," Mrs. Holl said, in a disappointed voice.
"Why, mother," Harry said, "one would think it made some difference to you, you speak so mournfully about it."
"It don't make no difference to me, Harry," Mrs. Holl said, "but it makes a lot of difference to you. You know I told you two or three months ago how you come to be here. I don't know as I told you that round the neck of your mother, when she died in that room, was a bit of silk ribbon, and on it was a little seal of gold, with a red stone in it, which I put by very careful for you, though what good such a thing would do to you, or anybody else, I didn't see. Well, on that red stone there was something cut; and father he took it to a chap as understands about those things, who got some red wax, and hotted it, and dropped some of it on a paper, and then squeezed this 'ere stone down on it, and looks at the mark through a eye-glass, and he tells father that it was a hand with three fingers holding a dagger."
"That was curious, mother," Harry said, "very curious. Can you fetch me the seal and let me have a look at it? I don't remember ever having seen it."
The seal was fetched by Mrs. Holl from a pill-box, in which it was carefully stored away in the corner of a drawer. Harry examined it closely.