rable plight,
having lost their all, except their Bible, much valued then by the
unfortunate sailors, and now by a descendant in whose possession
it is. About the year 1812 these same brothers sailed to the island
of Teneriffe in an armed merchant ship, but after leaving that
place were never heard of.'

Here, then, I had the simple apparatus for a mystery; for, of course,
the key must be made to unlock something far more uncommon than a
quadrant; and I still think it a capital apparatus, had I only possessed
the wit to use it properly. There was romance in this key--that was
obvious enough, and I puzzled over it for some weeks, by the end of
which my plot had grown to something like this: A family living in
poverty, though heirs to great wealth--this wealth buried close to their
door, and the key to unlock it hanging over their heads from morning to
night. It was soon settled, too, that this family should be Cornish, and
the scene laid on the Cornish coast, Cornwall being the only corner of
the earth with which I had more than a superficial acquaintance.

So far, so good; but what was the treasure to be? And what the reason
that stood between its inheritors and their enjoyment of it? As it
happened, these two questions were answered together. The small library
at Trinity--a delightful room, where Dr. Johnson spent many quiet hours
at work upon his 'Dictionary'--is fairly rich in books of old travel and
discovery; fine folios, for the most part, filling the shelves on your
left as you enter. To the study of these I gave up a good many hours
that should have been spent on ancient history of another pattern, and
more directly profitable for Greats; and in one of them--Purchas, I
think, but will not swear--first came on the Great Ruby of Ceylon. Not
long after, a note in Yule's edition of 'Marco Polo' set my imagination
fairly in chase of this remarkable gem; and I hunted up all the
accessible authorities. The size of this ruby (as thick as a man's arm,
says Marco Polo, while Maundevile, who was an artist, and lied with
exactitude, puts it at a foot in length and five fingers in girth), its
colour, 'like unto fire,' and the mystery and completeness of its
disappearance, combined to fascinate me. No form of riches is so
romantic as a precious stone with a heart in it and a history. I had
only to endow it with a curse proportionate to its size and beauty, and
I had all that a story-teller could poss