s had been undone, and revealed themselves as great pigs
of lead.

"There is my raw material," said Raffles Haw carelessly, nodding at the
heap. "Every Saturday I have a waggon-load sent up, which serves me
for a week, but we shall need to work double tides when Laura and I
are married, and we get our great schemes under way. I have to be very
careful about the quality of the lead, for, of course, every impurity is
reproduced in the gold."

A heavy iron door led into the inner chamber. Haw unlocked it, but only
to disclose a second one about five feet further on.

"This flooring is all disconnected at night," he remarked. "I have no
doubt that there is a good deal of gossip in the servants'-hall about
this sealed chamber, so I have to guard myself against some inquisitive
ostler or too adventurous butler."

The inner door admitted them into the laboratory, a high, bare,
whitewashed room with a glass roof. At one end was the furnace and
boiler, the iron mouth of which was closed, though the fierce red light
beat through the cracks, and a dull roar sounded through the building.
On either side innumerable huge Leyden jars stood ranged in rows, tier
topping tier, while above them were columns of Voltaic cells. Robert's
eyes, as he glanced around, lit on vast wheels, complicated networks of
wire, stands, test-tubes, coloured bottles, graduated glasses, Bunsen
burners, porcelain insulators, and all the varied _debris_ of a chemical
and electrical workshop.

"Come across here," said Raffles Haw, picking his way among the heaps of
metal, the coke, the packing-cases, and the carboys of acid. "Yours
is the first foot except my own which has ever penetrated to this
room since the workmen left it. My servants carry the lead into the
ante-room, but come no further. The furnace can be cleaned and stoked
from without. I employ a fellow to do nothing else. Now take a look in
here."

He threw open a door on the further side, and motioned to the young
artist to enter. The latter stood silent with one foot over the
threshold, staring in amazement around him. The room, which may have
been some thirty feet square, was paved and walled with gold. Great
brick-shaped ingots, closely packed, covered the whole floor, while on
every side they were reared up in compact barriers to the very ceiling.
The single electric lamp which lighted the windowless chamber struck
a dull, murky, yellow light from the vast piles of precious metal, and
gle