n, so that
the contents would not rattle about when moved."

The man who was telling the story stopped at this point so long that
we who sat there in the smoking room of the Club listening to him
were afraid he was not going to continue. At last he said:--

"This is the part of the story which I do not like to tell.

"On the black velvet lining of the cabinet, surrounded by the jumble
of curios among which it had been tossed, lay old Perico's stone,--not
the plain, dark stone which I had put there, but a faintly glowing
circle of lustrous light.

"I shut the lid of the cabinet down, locked the box, and put the key in
my pocket. But I did no more packing that night. I came down here to
the Club, and stayed as long as I could get anybody to stay with me,
and talked of everything under the sun except the one thing which I
was all the time thinking about.

"The next day I told myself I was a fool, and crazy into the bargain,
and that my eyes had deceived me. And then, in spite of all this,
when I went home at night I could hardly wait for dusk to come that
I might open the cabinet.

"The stone lay on the velvet, just as the night before, as if it were
a thing on fire!

"I said to myself that I would have some common sense, and would
exercise my will power; and went on with my packing with furious
energy. But I did not put the cabinet where I could not get at it.

"The boat for Hong Kong on which I had taken passage was to sail the
next night. I finished my work, said good bye to my acquaintances,
and went on board. Fifteen minutes before the steamer sailed I had my
luggage tumbled from her deck back on to the wharf, and came ashore,
swearing at myself for a fool, and knowing that I would be well
laughed at and quizzed for my fickleness by every one who knew me."

The man stopped again. After a little, one of the men who had been
listening to him said, in a voice which sounded strangely softened:--

"I remember. That was the ----," calling the name of a steamer
which brought to us all the recollection of one of the most awful
sea tragedies of those terrible tropic waters, where sometimes sea
and wind seem to be in league to buffet and destroy.

"Yes," said the man who had told the story. "No person who sailed on
board of her that night was ever seen again; and only bits of wreckage
on one of the northern reefs gave any hint of her fate."

PEARLS OF SULU

Now and then people comment upon the odd styl