' 'Well? go on, do!' said Humphreys
impatiently. 'Oh! you want to know what we found in it, of course. Well,
it was half full of stuff like ashes.' 'Ashes? What did you make of them?'
'I haven't thoroughly examined them yet; there's hardly been time: but
Cooper's made up his mind--I dare say from something I said--that it's a
case of cremation... Now don't excite yourself, my good sir: yes, I must
allow I think he's probably right.'
The maze is gone, and Lady Wardrop has forgiven Humphreys; in fact, I
believe he married her niece. She was right, too, in her conjecture that
the stones in the temple were numbered. There had been a numeral painted
on the bottom of each. Some few of these had rubbed off, but enough
remained to enable Humphreys to reconstruct the inscription. It ran thus:
PENETRANS AD INTERIORA MORTIS
Grateful as Humphreys was to the memory of his uncle, he could not quite
forgive him for having burnt the journals and letters of the James Wilson
who had gifted Wilsthorpe with the maze and the temple. As to the
circumstances of that ancestor's death and burial no tradition survived;
but his will, which was almost the only record of him accessible,
assigned an unusually generous legacy to a servant who bore an Italian
name.
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