“It’s a little difficult to tell you for she spoke in a strange tongue, and I had to translate it in my head, as it were.  But this is the gist of it.  That you were to have that chest and what was in it.  There’s a writing there, she says, or part of a writing for some has gone—­rotted away.  You are to read that writing or to get it read and to print it so that the world may read it also.  She said that ‘Hubert’ wishes you to do so.  I am sure the name was Hubert, though she also spoke of him with some other title which I do not understand.  That’s all I can remember, except something about a city, yes, a City of Gold and a last great battle in which Hubert fell, covered with glory and conquering.  I understood that she wanted to talk about that because it isn’t in the writing, but you interrupted and of course she’s gone.  Yes, the price is L50 and not a farthing less, but you can pay it when you like for I know you’re as honest as most, and whether you pay it or not, you must have that chest and what’s in it and no one else.”

“All right,” I said, “but don’t trust it to the carrier.  I’ll send a cart for it to-morrow morning.  Lock it now and give me the key.”

In due course the chest arrived, and I examined the bundle for the other contents do not matter, although some of them were interesting.  Pinned inside the shawl I found a paper, undated and unsigned, but which from the character and style of the writing was, I should say, penned by a lady about sixty years ago.  It ran thus:—­

“My late father, who was such a great traveller in his young days and so fond of exploring strange places, brought these things home from one of his journeys before his marriage, I think from South America.  He told me once that the dress was found upon the body of a woman in a tomb and that she must have been a great lady, for she was surrounded by a number of other women, perhaps her servants who were brought to be buried with her here when they died.  They were all seated about a stone table at the end of which were the remains of a man.  My father saw the bodies near the ruins of some forest city, in the tomb over which was heaped a great mound of earth.  That of the lady, which had a kind of shroud made of the skins of long-wooled sheep wrapped about it as though to preserve the dress beneath, had been embalmed in some way, which the natives of the place, wherever it was, told him showed that she was royal.  The others were mere skeletons, held together by the skin, but the man had a long fair beard and hair still hanging to his skull, and by his side was a great cross-hilted sword that crumbled to fragments when it was touched, except the hilt and the knob of amber upon it which had turned almost black with age.  I think my father said that the packet of skins or parchment of which the underside is badly rotted with damp was set under the feet of the man.  He told me that he gave those who found the tomb a great deal of money for the dress, gold ornaments, and emerald necklace, as nothing so perfect had been found before, and the cloth is all worked with gold thread.  My father told me, too, that he did not wish the things to be sold.”