sive step, by the sum of
which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.

I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
book to the agent.

A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
assenting, I proceeded to do so.

The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
was lineally connected with--though, of course, not descendant
from--that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
convent, who wrote the now so celebrated _Jocelini Chronica_: and the
chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:

'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,
Or shuld it chaunges dre,
The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'

The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
another