as chemically pure,
without any alloy, and therefore of the highest value.

On their return to the hotel, Mr. Escrocevitch weighed the bags, which
turned out to weigh forty-eight pounds. Allowing three pounds for the
weight of the bags, this left forty-five pounds of pure gold.

"How much a pound do you want?" Shadursky asked him.

"A pretty low price, your excellency," answered the Siberian, with a
shrug of his shoulders, "as I am selling from extreme necessity,
because I have to leave for Siberia; I've spent too much time and
money in St. Petersburg already; and if I cannot sell my wares, I
shall not be able to go at all. I assume that the government price is
known to your excellency?"

"But I am willing to take two hundred rubles a pound."

I can't take a kopeck less, and even so I am making a reduction of
nearly a hundred rubles the pound."

"All right!" assented Shadursky. "That will amount to--" he went on,
knitting his brows, "forty-five pounds at two hundred rubles a
pound----"

"It will make exactly nine thousand, your excellency. Just exactly
nine," Escrocevitch obsequiously helped him out. The prince, cutting
the matter short, immediately gave him a check, and taking the trunk
with the coveted bags, drove with the Siberian employee to his
father's house, where the elder Prince Shadursky, at his son's
pressing demand, though very unwillingly, exchanged the check for nine
thousand rubles in bills, for which Ivan Ivanovitch Valyajnikoff
forthwith gave a receipt. The prince was delighted with his purchase,
and he did not utter a syllable about it to anyone except Kovroff.

Sergei Antonovitch gave him a friendly counsel not to waste any time,
but to go abroad at once, as, according to the _Exchange Gazette_,
gold was at that moment very high, so that he had an admirable
opportunity to get rid of his wares on very favorable terms.

The prince, in fact, without wasting time got his traveling passport,
concealed his purchase with the utmost care, and set out for the
frontier, announcing that he was on his way to his mother, whose
health imperatively demanded his presence.

The success of the whole business depended on the fact that brass
filings, which bear a strong external resemblance to gold dust, are
dissipated in the strong heat of the blow-pipe. The charcoal was
prepared beforehand, a slight hollow being cut in it with a penknife,
in the bottom of which is placed a globule of pure gold, the top of