sell it to you at all. I will put it in a holy
shrine."

Festus Clasby turned the can over in his hands, a little bewildered. "It
looks an ordinary can enough," he said.

"It is the Can with the Diamond Notch," declared Mac-an-Ward.

"Would it be worth a shilling now?"

"He puts a price upon it! It is blasphemy. The man has no religion; he
will lose his soul. The devils will have him by the heels. They will
tear his red soul through the roof. Give me the can; don't hold it in
those hands any longer. They are coarse; the hair is standing about the
purple knuckles like stubbles in an ill-cut meadow. That can was made
for the hands of a delicate woman or for the angels that carry water to
the Court of Heaven. I saw it in a vision the night before I made it; it
was on the head of a maiden with golden hair. Her feet were bare and
like shells. She walked across a field where daisies rose out of young
grass; she had the can resting on her head like one coming from the
milking. So I rose up then and said, 'Now, I will make a can fit for
this maiden's head.' And I made it out of the rising sun and the
falling dew. And now you ask me if it is worth a shilling."

"For all your talk, it is only made of tin, and not such good tin."

"Not good tin! I held it in my hand in the piece before ever the
clippers was laid upon it. I bent it and it curved, supple as a young
snake. I shook it, and the ripples ran down the length of it like silver
waves in a little lake. The strength of the ages was in its voice. It
has gathered its power in the womb of the earth. It was smelted from the
precious metal taken from the mines of the Peninsula of Malacca, and it
will have its gleam when the sparkle of the diamond is spent."

"I'll give you a shilling for it, and hold your tongue."

"No! I will not have it on my conscience. God is my judge, I will break
it up first. I will cut it into pieces. From one of them will yet be
made a breastplate, and in time to come it will be nailed to your own
coffin, with your name and your age and the date of your death painted
upon it. And when the paint is faded upon it it will shine over the
dust of the bone of your breast. It will be dug up and preserved when
all graveyards are abolished. They will say, 'We will keep this
breastplate, for who knows but that it bore the name of the man who
refused to buy the Can with the Diamond Notch.'"

"How much will you take for it?"

"Now you are respectful. Let m