d miserable and overworked; and then I was transplanted out of a
slum window-box into a sunny garden, just in time; yet I'm sure that most
of my old troubles were in a way of my own making, because I hated being so
insignificant; but I fear that was a little poison lurking in me from the
Earls of Shropshire. That is the odd thing about ambitions, that they seem
so often like regaining a lost position rather than making a new one. The
truth is that we are caged; and the only thing to do is to think about the
cage as little as we can."

XXVIII

OF CRYSTALS

One day I was strolling down the garden among the winding paths, when I
came suddenly upon Father Payne, who was hurrying towards the house. He had
in each of his hands a large roughly spherical stone, and looked at me a
little shamefacedly.

"You look, Father," I said, "as if you were going to stone Stephen."

He laughed, and looked at the stones. "Yes," he said, "they are what the
Greeks called 'hand-fillers,' for use in battle--but I have no nefarious
designs."

"What are you going to do with them?" I said

"That's a secret!" he said, and made as if he were going in. Then he said,
"Come, you shall hear it--you shall share my secret, and be a partner in my
dreams, as the fisherman says in Theocritus." But he did not tell me what
he was going to do, and seemed half shy of doing so.

"It's like Dr. Johnson and the orange-peel," I said. "'Nay, Sir, you shall
know their fate no further.'"

"Well, the truth is," he said at last, "that I'm a perfect baby. I never
can resist looking into a hole in the ground, and I happened to look into
the pit where we dig gravel. I can't tell you how long I spent there."

"What were you doing?" I said.

"Looking for fossils," he said; "I had a great gift for finding them when I
was a child. I didn't find any fossils to-day, but I found these stones,
and I think they contain crystals. I am going to break them and see."

I took one in my hand. "I think they are only fossil sponges," I said;
"there will only be a rusty sort of core inside."

"You know that!" he said, brightening up; "you know about stones too? But
these are not sponges--they would rattle if they were--no, they contain
crystals--I am sure of it. Come and see!"

We went into the stable-yard. Father Payne fetched a hammer, and then
selected a convenient place in the cobbled yard to break the stones. He put
one of them in position, and aimed a blow at it, b