He thought he had never been so happy in his life, or so much afraid.
But time pressed.

He knew now that he should certainly climb over that gate again, though for the present he did not dare to stay; and stooping, almost creeping, over the open lawn and the bed of lilies, he began to work his way homeward by the wall, and through old borders where the thickest trees and shrubs had always grown.
At last, after pushing on for a little distance, he paused to rest in a clump of fir-trees, one of which had been dead for so many years that all its twigs and smaller boughs had decayed and dropped to the ground.
Only the large branches, gaunt and skeleton-like, were left standing, and in a fork between two of these and quite within his reach, in a lump of soft felt, or perhaps beaver, he noticed something that glittered.
Peter drew it away from the soft material it was lying among, and looked at it.

It was a sort of gold band--perhaps it was gold lace, for it was flexible--he had often heard of gold lace, but had not seen any.

As he drew it away something else that depended from a morsel of the lump of rag fell away from it, and dropped at his feet.

It might have been some sort of badge or ornament, but it was not perfect, though it still glittered, for it had threads of gold wrought in it.