e thin
streak of daylight, and its luminousness was almost immediately
restored.

So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of
Mr. Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light
(which had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a
perfect darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the
crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would
seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and
not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger--whose name will be
familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur
Institute--was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's
own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that
of Mr. Cave's. Even with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably:
his vision was most vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue.

Now, from the outset this light in the crystal exercised a curious
fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his loneliness of soul
than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being
of his curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an
atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure
would have been to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn
advanced, and the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became
to all appearance non-luminous. And for some time he was unable to see
anything in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop.

But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a
collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and
putting it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the
luminous movement within the crystal even in the daytime. He was very
cautious lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised
this occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs,
and then circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day,
turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and
went like a flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had
for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange
country; and, turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see
the same vision again.

Now, it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr.
Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that