Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/68

Rh few steps blindly forward only to meet the grey earth of the cliff. Then the wind from off the sea lapped back the mist and I found that I was again alone on the deserted shore.

I walked back along the winding stream and past the spot where once a leisured gentleman of Durnovaria built for himself a villa. Its tesselated pavement still remains in situ. On the highway I fell in with a soldier and we walked along together.

"I suppose a draft of the 4th moved out of Upton Camp about three o'clock this morning," I remarked when the occasion offered. "I heard what I took to be their band."

"The 4th left two days ago," he answered. "There's no one in at Upton now."

"Then the band?" I persisted. "What band was there about?"

He looked at me a little curiously—or perhaps I fancied it.

"I heard no band," he said, "and I was out on guard duty up at Bincombe then. If there had been a band," he decided with the doggedness of simple conviction, "I reckon I should 'a heard it."

When I reached home again the morning papers had just arrived. You will recall that day perhaps. This was what their head-lines blazed forth:

A little later I took an opportunity to complete the scouring of my coin. It disclosed the head of an elderly man, dignified without being distinguished, and wearing a wreath of laurel. The inscription around it was this: