I answered, fresh pilchard bait; and offered him some, delicately forbearing to return the question, since it is an article of faith with us that the burgesses of Lestiddle bait with earthworms which they dig out of their back gardens.

Well, he accepted my pilchard bait, and pulled up two score of mackerel within as many minutes, which doubtless gave him something to boast about on his return.
He was not ungrateful.

Next week I received from him a parcel of MS.
with a letter saying that he had come across it, "a fly in amber," in turning over a pile of old Stannary records.

How it had found its way among them he could not guess.
A fly in amber, quotha! A jewel in a midden, rather! How it came among his trumpery archives I know as little as he, but can guess.
Some Lestiddle man must have stolen it, and chosen them as a safe hiding-place.
It gave me the clue, and more than the clue.

I know now the history of that Mayor of Troy who was so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the year following.
Listen! Stretch out both hands; open your mouth and shut your eyes! It is a draught of Troy's own vintage that I offer you; racy, fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so that it carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine.