ll this?" demanded Harry, turning the stone about
in his hands, and inspecting it curiously.

"That, Lord, is an amethyst," answered the other; "and, as you see, the
chest is nearly full of them. But, unless we should happen to discover
a new mine, I am afraid we shall get no more of them, for the mine from
which those were extracted appears to be exhausted; and it was never
very productive even at its best. We did not know what the stones were
when they were first discovered, but, as it was suspected that they
might possess a certain value, steps were taken to determine the
question, with the result that we were told they are amethysts. They
are not especially valuable, I believe, but we make a point of never
wasting anything, so it was decided to store these until wanted. Now
here,"--opening the next chest--"we have another mineral about which we
were a bit puzzled at first; but we were in less doubt in this case than
we were with regard to the amethysts, as the appearance of the stone
seemed to indicate that it possessed a value. We dealt with this as we
did with the amethysts, and found that we had chanced upon a
particularly rich opal deposit."

The chest of opals was, like the one previously opened, almost full, and
Harry took admiringly into his hand the great piece of rock representing
the half of a mass of stone that had been accidentally broken in two,
and found to contain a considerable quantity of iridescent, many-hued
crystal. The next chest contained some very fine specimens of sapphire;
but it was little more than half-full, the mine having only been
discovered within the last decade, and even then not very industriously
worked; but there were in the chest a few specimens that Escombe
shrewdly suspected to be practically priceless.

Having completed the inspection of the contents of the coffers on one
side of the room, the custodian crossed over to the other side, and
threw up the lid of a chest, the interior of which at once began to glow
as though each of the stones--looking very much like lumps of ordinary
washing soda--contained within it a morsel of phosphorus.

"Aha!" exclaimed Escombe, plunging his hand delightedly into the chest
and fishing up two or three of the stones; "no need to ask what these
are; there's no possibility of mistaking them. Yes, there's the genuine
soapy feel about them all right," as he ran his fingers over the smooth
surface of the crystals. "But I didn't know that