A.D. MDCXXXIII.
A: Æ: 25.
The painter paused and gazed in silence. "There must be something more under this," he said at length, "or that old villain would not have come here to break open the coffin. I wish Captain Barecolt had told me more, for I cannot help thinking that he and that pretty young lady have some interest in this affair. I have a great mind to see what is in the inside: there is but one screw left in; it would be easily taken out."
He stooped and took up the chisel, but then paused again in doubt and hesitation. "Well," he said, "I can put it in again if I find anything. There is no harm in looking;" and quietly applying the chisel to the purposes of a turnscrew, without venturing to use any such violence as those who preceded him had displayed, he drew out the last remaining screw, and looked with an anxious face at the coffin-lid, with some feelings of awe and reluctance. Then giving a glance round the vault, he removed the covering and laid it down against the neighbouring pile.
Lifting the lantern, Falgate looked into the last receptacle of what had once been young, and fresh, and beautiful.
There was the dusty shroud, somewhat mouldy, but not decayed; and as the face of the dead was covered with a cloth, none of the ghastly appearances of corruption were visible; but the falling of the drapery of death, the sharp lines and angles that the folds presented, told plainly and solemnly that the flesh had long returned to dust, and that nothing but the bones remained uncrumbled. One thing, however, instantly attracted the poor painter's attention: a piece of parchment, covered with writing, lay upon the breast, and taking it up he read it with care. The words seemed to direct him to a further search, and putting his hand to the left side of the shroud, though with some reluctance, he drew forth a small packet folded up and sealed. Blowing away the dust from it, after a few moments' consideration he wrapped it in the parchment, and put it into his pocket, saying, "If I do not take it, others will, who may make a bad use of it. I will convey it to those who have a right to have it, if God helps me out of this scrape."
Then replacing the lid of the coffin nearly as he had found it, he ate some of the bread and cheese, applied his lips again to the bottle of Nantz, and walking to the door, peeped out into the churchyard. All was still and quiet, the moon shining upon the gravestones, and the wind whispering through the old yews; and stripping of the surplice which he had found in the vestry, Diggory Falgate stole forth into the open air, got over the low wall, and made speed toward some trees that he saw at a distance.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
The small town of Beverley was as full as it could hold. It does not, indeed, seem at any time well calculated to hold a great many; but it is wonderful how elastic towns and even houses are when the inhabitants have a good mind to make room for others. It was, or seemed to be, as full as it could hold, however, as I have said, when about noon a body of some three hundred horse, followed at the distance of a quarter of a mile by a mixed troop of gentlemen and ladies, with a small party escorting some thirty-five or forty prisoners and two or three wagons, entered the place and marched up the principal street. A number of gay Cavaliers were lounging about at the doors of inns and private houses; some companies of train-bands were seen in the more open spaces, and guards appeared at the doors of the town-house, from the windows of which several heads were leaning forth, gazing listlessly upon the scene below. All was gay and pleasant confusion; for the party of the parliament took care to keep out of sight, and the royalists, exulting in the arrival of the king, were doing their best to show a hearty welcome to his court. Though somewhat less than two thousand cavalry, and a small infantry force, consisting entirely of train-bands, with half-a-dozen light pieces of artillery, certainly did not show much like an army, yet hope and excitement magnified the numbers; and the good townsmen of Beverley, as they reckoned up, with the exaggerating powers of imagination, more noblemen than they had ever seen in the parish before, and calculated the troop which each could bring into the field if he were willing, never doubted that, if the king had been so pleased, he might have brought a much larger host to the siege of Hull, and believed that many more would actually follow.
In this supposition, indeed, they were encouraged by a number of houses being already marked out as quarters for different persons who had not yet appeared. Amongst the rest, a handsome brick building, in a garden, on the side of Hull, had been assigned to the expected party of Lord Walton; and as soon as the head of the troop I have mentioned appeared, a man who had been waiting by the side of a saddled horse, at the door of the town-house, sprang into the saddle, and riding up to the commanding officer--our old friend Major Randal--informed him of the direction he was to take.