“No, not there, nor yet inside; but on the premises. The big bag, wi’ its contents, wor crammed up into a hole in the rocks—the clift at the back o’ the house.”
“Odd, all o’ it! An’ the oddest his leavin’ such things behind—to tell the tale o’ his guilty doin’s; I suppose bein’ full o’ his new fortunes, he’s forgot all about them.”
“But ye han’t waited for me to gie the whole o’ the cat’logue. There be somethin’ more to come.”
“What more?” asks the young waterman, suprisedly, and with renewed interest.
“A thing as seems kewrouser than all the rest. I can draw conclusions from the counterfeet coins, an’ the house-breakin’ implements; but the other beats me dead down, an’ I don’t know what to make o’t. Maybe you can tell. I foun’ it stuck up the same hole in the rocks, wi’ a stone in front exact fittin’ to an’ fillin’ its mouth.”
While speaking, he draws open a chest, and takes from it a bundle of some white stuff—apparently linen—loosely rolled. Unfolding, and holding it up to the light, he adds:—
“Theer be the eydentical article!”
No wonder he thought the thing strange, found where he had found it. For it is a shroud! White, with a cross and two letters in red stitched upon that part which, were it upon a body, both cross and lettering would lie over the breast!
“O God!” cries Jack Wingate, as his eyes rest upon the symbol. “That’s the shroud Mary Morgan wor buried in! I can swear to ’t. I seed her mother stitch on that cross an’ them letters—the ineetials o’ her name. An’ I seed it on herself in the coffin ’fore’t wor closed. Heaven o’ mercy! what do it mean?”
Amy Preece, lying awake in her bed, hears Jack Wingate’s voice excitedly exclaiming, and wonders what that means. But she is not told; nor learns she aught of a conversation which succeeds in more subdued tone; prolonged to a much later hour—even into morning. For before the two men part they mature a plan for ascertaining why that ghostly thing is still above ground instead of in the grave, where the body it covered is coldly sleeping!