ery fine specimens of Schoffer
and Fust. But those you may turn over any wet afternoon when you have
nothing better to do. Meanwhile, I have a little device connected with
this smoking-room which may amuse you. Light this other cigar. Now sit
with me upon this lounge which stands at the further end of the room."

The sofa in question was in a niche which was lined in three sides and
above with perfectly clear transparent crystal. As they sat down the
master of the house drew a cord which pulled out a crystal shutter
behind them, so that they were enclosed on all sides in a great box
of glass, so pure and so highly polished that its presence might very
easily be forgotten. A number of golden cords with crystal handles hung
down into this small chamber, and appeared to be connected with a long
shining bar outside.

"Now, where would you like to smoke your cigar?" said Raffles Haw, with
a twinkle in his demure eyes. "Shall we go to India, or to Egypt, or to
China, or to--"

"To South America," said Robert.

There was a twinkle, a whirr, and a sense of motion. The young artist
gazed about him in absolute amazement. Look where he would all round
were tree-ferns and palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of
brilliant orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he
sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no
mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from
the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green
leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the
trunks. Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly over
a branch above his head, and a bright-coloured paroquet broke suddenly
from amid the foliage and flashed off among the tree-trunks. Robert
gazed around, speechless with surprise, and finally turned upon his host
a face in which curiosity was not un-mixed with a suspicion of fear.

"People have been burned for less, have they not?" cried Raffles Haw
laughing heartily. "Have you had enough of the Amazon? What do you say
to a spell of Egypt?"

Again the whirr, the swift flash of passing objects, and in an instant
a huge desert stretched on every side of them, as far as the eye could
reach. In the foreground a clump of five palm-trees towered into the
air, with a profusion of rough cactus-like plants bristling from their
base. On the other side rose a rugged, gnarled, grey monolith, carved at
th