"No inscription here, runic or otherwise.—Humph! shall we supply one, Hic Jacet Ormus.—Now to remove this slab! Let us see if there are bones beneath."
Too eager to wait for Godfrey's assistance he seized the lid with one hand, and, exerting all his strength, swung it off laterally.
A cry of surprise, rather than of alarm, broke from him, as he caught sight of a full-sized human skeleton lying within. A burning fragment from the torch he carried dropped within the teeth of the skeleton, where, still continuing to glow, it lit up the skull with weird effect, the red flicker giving an apparent motion to the grinning jaws and eyeless sockets.
"Are these the remains of your Viking?" asked Godfrey.
"Can there be doubt about it? This is old Orm, or what is left of him," replied Idris, holding the torch low over the skeleton.—"Here reposes one who, I doubt not, made a brave figure in his day. And now? 'None so poor to do him reverence.' The people of Ormsby do not know even his name, and yet he was the founder of their town, its nomenclator, in fact. The old Greeks would have raised a statue and an altar to him in their market-place, and have worshipped him as their hero eponymous. And here he lies neglected and forgotten!
'Shade of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?'
"Is this wasted bone the 'high arm' spoken of on the runic ring? Where be now its feats of strength? And where is the wealth won by his ashen spear? the riches that conferred upon him the epithet of Golden? the treasure placed within the 'lofty tomb' by his wife, Hilda, the Norse prophetess? Vanished! Whither? Removed by whom? and when? Did Magnus of Deira really receive the runic ring despatched to him by his mother? Did he come here in ancient days to remove his heritage, or has the treasure been taken by other, perhaps modern, hands? If so, by whose? By the masked man of Quilaix's? By Captain Rochefort's or by my father's? Have they left behind any trace of their visit?"
His eyes roving around the chamber were attracted by a fabric lying at the foot of one of the walls.
"What have we here?" he said, stepping forward and picking it up. "A piece of cloth! Will this give us a clue to the men who were here last?"