an unusual and exciting story that it would
be cruel to leave us in suspense about the end."

"Very well, then," said Musard, as the other ladies chorused their
approval. "We left the cave, and Moynglass, who considered himself the
leader of the expedition, put the ruby in his pocket. That night we
camped at a wild desolate spot, not far from the edge of a cliff about
two hundred feet high, at the foot of which the bitter sulphurous waters
of the river flowed into a chasm. In the morning we found Moynglass
lying dead in his blanket, with the rusty sheath knife he had brought
away from the cave sticking in his breast. The ruby was gone, and, so,
also, was the eldest member of our party--an elderly dark-faced Irishman
named Doyne, who, the previous day, had angrily disputed Moynglass's
right to carry the ruby.

"We searched for Doyne all that day, but could find no trace of him. The
next day we tracked across a glacier-like expanse littered with large
blocks of sandstone. It was a grim spot. A horrible, stony, treeless
waste which might have been the birthplace of the earth and the scene of
Creation--a tableland between great mountains, full of masses of
rhodonite contorted into grotesque shapes of stone images; a place where
our lightest whispers came shouting back out of the profound stillness
from the huge castellated black rocks bristling on the edge of a
precipice which slit the valley from end to end.

"It was there we found Doyne, staggering along the lip of the gorge. He
had gone mad in the solitude, and was wandering along bareheaded,
tossing his arms in the air as he walked. When I saw him I thought of
Cain trying to escape from the wrath of God after killing Abel. He saw
us as soon as we saw him, and started to run. We set out in pursuit, but
he fled with great speed, leaping from rock to rock like a mountain
goat. He was getting away from us when he slipped and fell into the
chasm with a loud cry. We found a path down the precipice and descended,
and discovered him at the foot, battered to death, with the ruby
clutched in his hand. That ended the expedition. The others insisted on
returning to the coast without delay, and when we arrived there they
gladly sold their shares in the ruby to me."

There was rather a long silence when the explorer had finished his
narration. The long hand of the clock on the mantelpiece was creeping
past the half-hour, but the circle round the dining-room table had been
so enth