‘You may have that if you like,’ said Mr. Williams to his visitor carelessly. He was a fat, coarse man, but very good-natured. ‘For, being on vellum, it is no use to light the fire with.’
‘You don’t mean to say you light your fire with anything I see here?’ gasped Mr. Erin.
‘Well, no, there’s nothing much left of that sort of rubbish; we made a clean sweep of it all about a fortnight since.’
‘There were no old MSS., I hope?’
‘MSS.! Heaps on ’em. They came from New Place at the time of the fire, you see, though Heaven knows why any one should have thought them worth saving. They were all piled in that little room yonder, and as I wanted a place for some young partridges as I am bringing up, I burnt the whole lot of ‘em.’
‘You looked at them first, of course, to make sure that there was nothing of consequence?’
‘Well, of course I did. I hope Dick Williams ain’t such a fool as to burn law documents. No, they were mostly poetry and that kind of stuff.’
‘But did you make certain about the handwriting? Else, my good sir, it might have been that of Shakespeare himself.’
‘Shakespeare! Well, what of him? Why, there was bundles and bundles with his name wrote upon them. It was in this very fireplace I made a regular bonfire of them.’