The man nodded and rode on in the direction of the stables.
Jeffray and the painter went back to the terrace and leaned against the balustrade. There was an anxious frown on Jeffray’s face as he broke the seal, and spread the letter on the stone coping before him. He ran his eyes over the straggling and ill-formed sentences, his face clearing as he neared the end.
“Sir,—Having promised to obtain for you any information bearing upon Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw’s past, I send you a rough copy of an extraordinary confession made to me by an old woman we found tied to a chair in one of the cottages. I cannot promise you how much truth there is in her tale, but on searching the place called the Monk’s Grave, we discovered that the turf some twenty paces from the old tree that grows on the mound there, had been trampled down quite recently. On digging we found the earth very loose, as though it had been lately turned, also a ragged piece of sail cloth, but no treasure. It is probable that the money has been taken up and hidden elsewhere, and the suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the old man, Isaac Grimshaw, is still at large. The man whom we found dead in the grass has been sworn to as Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw’s husband.
“I trust that these facts will be of interest to you.
“Unfortunately my duties here prevent me from dining with you to-day. I take the liberty of postponing the pleasure till to-morrow.
“James Jellicoe,
“Cornet in his Majesty’s—Regiment of Horse.”
Enclosed within the letter, Jeffray found a page torn from a pocket-book, and covered with the cornet’s boyish writing. He held it towards Wilson, and they spelled it out together, experiencing some difficulty in deciphering the sentences that seemed to have been written in the dusk.
Statement made by Mrs. Ursula Grimshaw this 1st day of July, 17 —:
“I am Isaac Grimshaw’s sister. The girl Bess, my nephew’s wife, is not of our blood. Twenty years ago come Michaelmas, four sailor men came into the forest with a treasure chest, arms, and a young child. They lodged in my brother Isaac’s cottage, and he and they talked much together. The chest contained much money and precious things. My brother Isaac and his son John, who has been dead these fifteen years, murdered these four sailors when they were drunk, and buried their bodies in the forest. We kept the child as one of us, and called her Bess, and hid the treasure in the woods.