friend Vincey.

"_To my son Leo, should he live to open this casket._"

I handed the letter to Leo, who glanced at the envelope, and then put it
down upon the table, making a motion to me to go on emptying the casket.

The next thing that I found was a parchment carefully rolled up. I
unrolled it, and seeing that it was also in Vincey's handwriting, and
headed, "Translation of the Uncial Greek Writing on the Potsherd," put
it down by the letter. Then followed another ancient roll of parchment,
that had become yellow and crinkled with the passage of years. This I
also unrolled. It was likewise a translation of the same Greek original,
but into black-letter Latin, which at the first glance from the style
and character appeared to me to date from somewhere about the beginning
of the sixteenth century. Immediately beneath this roll was something
hard and heavy, wrapped up in yellow linen, and reposing upon another
layer of the fibrous material. Slowly and carefully we unrolled the
linen, exposing to view a very large but undoubtedly ancient potsherd
of a dirty yellow colour! This potsherd had in my judgment, once been
a part of an ordinary amphora of medium size. For the rest, it measured
ten and a half inches in length by seven in width, was about a quarter
of an inch thick, and densely covered on the convex side that lay
towards the bottom of the box with writing in the later uncial Greek
character, faded here and there, but for the most part perfectly
legible, the inscription having evidently been executed with the
greatest care, and by means of a reed pen, such as the ancients
often used. I must not forget to mention that in some remote age this
wonderful fragment had been broken in two, and rejoined by means of
cement and eight long rivets. Also there were numerous inscriptions on