have been trampled on.

"Are these to be burned?" he asked.

"Yes," said Charnock. "Don't want them about to remind me----Burn the
lot."

Festing, with some reluctance, threw them into the stove. He was not,
as a rule, romantic, but it jarred him to see the things destroyed. They
had, no doubt, once been valued for the giver's sake; dainty hands had
touched them; the locket had rested on somebody's white skin. They
were pledges of trust and affection, and he had found them, trampled by
Charnock's heavy boots, among the dust and rubbish.

"You'd get on faster if you used a brush," he suggested.

"Can't find the brush. Confounded thing's hidden itself somewhere. Can't
remember where I put anything to-night. Suppose you don't see a small
lace handkerchief about?"

Festing said he did not, and Charnock made a gesture of resignation.
"Looks as if I'd burned it with the other truck, but I got that from
Sadie, and there'll be trouble if she wants to know where it's gone. She
may want to know some time. Sadie doesn't forget."

"Did Sadie give you the locket?"

"She did not," said Charnock. "You're a tactless brute. But there's
something else I want, and I don't know where it can have got."