message with which I had been charged."

"But why could you not write to me?" asked Lady Chillington.

"Your ladyship, I am no scholar," answered the old soldier, with a vivid
blush. "What I have told you to-day in half-an-hour would have taken me
years to set down--in fact, I could never have done it."

"So be it," said Lady Chillington. "My obligation to you is all the
greater for bearing in mind for so many years my poor boy's last
message, and for being at so much trouble to deliver it." She sighed
deeply and rose from her chair. The Sergeant rose too, thinking that
his interview was at an end, but at her ladyship's request he reseated
himself.

Rejecting Janet's proffered arm, which she was in the habit of leaning
on in her perambulations about the house and grounds, Lady Chillington
walked slowly and painfully out of the room. Presently she returned,
carrying an open letter in her hand. Both the ink and the paper on which
it was written were faded and yellow with age.

"This is the last letter I ever received from my son," said her
ladyship. "I have preserved it religiously, and it bears out very
singularly what you, Sergeant, have just told me respecting the message
which my darling sent me with his dying breath. In a few lines at the
end he makes mention of a something of great value which he is going to
bring home with him; but he writes about it in such guarded terms that I
never could satisfy myself as to the precise meaning of what he intended
to convey. You, Miss Hope, will perhaps be good enough to read the lines
in question aloud. They are contained in a postscript."