he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he
made a singular discovery.

At that time his health was very bad--and it must be borne in mind that,
throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of
ebb--and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence,
the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and
step-children. His wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a
growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and
over-reaching; and his step-son had conceived a violent dislike for him,
and lost no chance of showing it. The requirements of his business
pressed heavily upon him, and Mr. Wace does not think that he was
altogether free from occasional intemperance. He had begun life in a
comfortable position, he was a man of fair education, and he suffered,
for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and insomnia. Afraid to disturb
his family, he would slip quietly from his wife's side, when his
thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the house. And about
three o'clock one morning, late in August, chance directed him into the
shop.

The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where
he perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered
it to be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the
counter towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the
shutters, impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its
entire interior.

It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of
optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the
rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its
interior, but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He
approached the crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a
transient revival of the scientific curiosity that in his youth had
determined his choice of a calling. He was surprised to find the light
not steady, but writhing within the substance of the egg, as though that
object was a hollow sphere of some luminous vapour. In moving about to
get different points of view, he suddenly found that he had come between
it and the ray, and that the crystal none the less remained luminous.
Greatly astonished, he lifted it out of the light ray and carried it to
the darkest part of the shop. It remained bright for some four or five
minutes, when it slowly faded and went out. He placed it in th