g the gaze and
curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually touched that of a young
woman who was wending her way to an evening lecture, she started and
almost uttered a cry.

"Ralph Cranfield!" was the name that she half articulated.

"Can that be my old playmate Faith Egerton?" thought the traveller,
looking round at her figure, but without pausing.

Ralph Cranfield from his youth upward had felt himself marked out for
a high destiny. He had imbibed the idea--we say not whether it were
revealed to him by witchcraft or in a dream of prophecy, or that his
brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of
a sybil, but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his
articles of faith--that three marvellous events of his life were to be
confirmed to him by three signs.

The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his
youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the
maid who alone of all the maids on earth could make him happy by her
love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful
woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart--whether of
pearl or ruby or emerald or carbuncle or a changeful opal, or perhaps
a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were
a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger he
was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy
heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his fated
bride--if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below
which all eternity should only bind more closely--she would reply,
with her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, "This token which I have
worn so long is the assurance that you may."

And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a
mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth of which the
burial-place would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should
press upon the mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him
pointing downward--whether carved of marble or hewn in gigantic
dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of
flame in empty air, he could not tell, but at least he would discern a
hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word
"_Effode_"--"Dig!" And, digging thereabouts, the gold in coin or
ingots, the precious stones, or of whatever else the treasure might
consist, would be certain to reward his toil.