"You see the date," I said.

"Yes," answered the lawyer, "and it has not been altered!"

"No," I added, "it has not been altered;" but I did not tell them that
Jan had not written it down till afterwards, and then by mistake had
recorded the year in which he wrote, refusing to change it, although I
pointed out the error, because, he said, there was no room, and that it
would make a mess in the book.

"There is one more thing," I went on; "you say the mother of him you
seek was a great lady. Well, I saw the body of the mother of the boy
who was found, and it was that of a common person very roughly clad with
coarse underclothes and hands hard with labour, on which there was but
one ring, and that of silver. Here it is," and going to a drawer I took
from it a common silver ring which I once bought from a pedlar because
he worried me into it. "Lastly, gentlemen, the father of our lad was no
lord, unless in your country it is the custom of lords to herd sheep,
for the boy told me that in his own land his father was a shepherd,
and that he was travelling to some distant English colony to follow his
trade. That is all I have to say about it, though I am sorry that the
lad is not here to tell it you himself."

When he had heard this statement of mine, which I made in a cold and
indifferent voice, the young lord, Ralph's cousin, rose and stretched
himself, smiling happily.

"Well," he said, "there is the end of a very bad nightmare, and I am