He pointed out the letters with his finger, and gradually spelled the inscription through, until she caught its purport.
"How very odd!" she exclaimed, at the end. But the look with which she accompanied the remark showed that the verses touched no chord of memory or knowledge in her mind. "Where do you suppose the girl got the idea?" she concluded.
The quivering sensation which Lance had felt, at first, renewed itself. He laid the belt down, and, as he did so, his hands trembled.
"Do you know anything about this motto?" he said, appealing to the colonel.
But the colonel was also a blank on the subject.
Lance, therefore, was reduced to telling them where he had seen it. In doing this he was quite methodical, but he could not conceal the peculiar agitation which affected him.
Both the colonel and his daughter were much impressed by his strange disclosure, and were utterly at a loss to account for the reappearance of the traditional rhymes in a way so unlooked for; but they did not take the mystery so much to heart as Lance did.
"It's not only extraordinary, but incredible," he affirmed. "I must see that girl and ask her about it."