“You see,” said the Colonel, holding a candle close to the time-blackened panel, “it is a meaningless piece of mediæval doggerel roughly carved in the wood. The oak-leaf border is very fine, so your father tells me, Harry”—to Lorian—“but it is probably the work of another hand, as is the man and ragged staff which form the shield at the top.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Hulme, “that the writing might be of a very much later date—late Stuart, for instance?”
“No,” replied the Colonel abruptly, and turned away. “I am sure it is earlier than that.”
I was not the only member of the party who noticed the curt tone of his reply; and when we had all retired for the night I lingered in Lorian’s room and reverted to the matter.
“Is the late Stuart period a sore point with the Colonel?” I asked.
Lorian, who was in an unusually thoughtful mood, lighted his pipe and nodded.
“It is said,” he explained, “that a Reynor at about that time turned buccaneer and became the terror of the two Atlantics! I don’t know what possessed Hulme to say such a thing. Probably he doesn’t know about the piratical page in the family records, however. He’s a strange chap.”
“He is,” I agreed. “Everybody seems to know him, yet nobody knows anything about him. I first met him at the Travellers’ Club. I was unaware, until I came down here this time, that the Colonel was one of his friends.”
“Edie brought him down first,” replied Lorian. “But I think Hulme had met Sybil—Miss Reynor—in London, before. I may be a silly ass, but somehow I distrust the chap—always have. He seems to know altogether too much about other people’s affairs.”