The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional; but a
sequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been more than one
listener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year, or of the
next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.

? One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds and ends in
the smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box. "Now," he
said, "you know about old things; tell me what that is." My friend opened
the little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an object attached to
it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles to examine it
more narrowly. "What's the history of this?" he asked. "Odd enough," was the
answer. "You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery: well, a year or two back
we were cleaning out the old well that used to be in the clearing here, and
what do you suppose we found?"

? "Is it possible that you found a body?" said the visitor, with an odd
feeling of nervousness.

? "We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word, we found two."

? "Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there? Was
this thing found with them?"

? "It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one of the bodies.
A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One body had the
arms tight round the other. They must have been there thirty years or more -
long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filled the well
up fast enough. Do you make anything of what's cut on that gold coin you
have there?"

? "I think I can," said my friend, holding it to the light (but he read it
without much difficulty); "it seems to be G.W.S., 24 July, 1865."