ralled by the story that nobody had noted the passage of time.

"What a ghastly adventure, Mr. Musard!" began one of the ladies, with a
mirthless little laugh. "Did you never discover anything more about the
two dead men in the cave?"

"No," replied Musard. "As I said, there were no papers or any clue to
throw light on their identity. The skeletons must have lain there for
many years, for the bones were crumbling into decay."

"You have never revisited the spot?" asked Sir Philip.

"I was in the Ureweras two years later with a Maori guide, investigating
copper deposits for the New Zealand Government, but I did not go back to
the valley."

"Would it not have been possible to give the poor things--the skeletons,
I mean--Christian burial?" Mrs. Spicer asked timidly.

"It was impossible to dig a grave in the solid rock. Besides, they have
a sepulchre of Nature's which will outlast any human grave," replied
Musard.

"The thing that puzzles me is how the ruby got into the skeleton's eye,"
remarked the lady journalist musingly. "If that was the skeleton of the
man who killed the other for stealing the ruby, who placed the ruby
where you found it? Obviously, he could not have done it himself, for it
must have been put there after death. Who, then, could it have been?"

"I have no idea," said Musard, in a tone which suggested that he did not
care to discuss the subject further.

"May I look at the ring?" Miss Garton asked.

Musard drew it off his finger and handed it to her in silence. The
others wanted to see it, so it was passed from hand to hand round the
table, to the accompaniment of many admiring comments on the size and
beauty of the stone. One of the young officers, with an air of much
interest, asked Musard whether he thought there were other rubies like
it to be found near the spot.

"Hardly in that form," replied Musard. "It is a puzzle to me how the men
who found the ruby managed to get it out of the ruby rock and partially
polish it. They had no tools or instruments of any kind--at least, we
found none in the cave. Undoubtedly there are rubies in that part of the
world. It was near the valley that Moynglass found his sample of
corundum, with a ruby crystal in it. On our way back, at the head of the
valley, I came across a belt of magnesian rocks charged with ores of
copper and iron, and probably containing the matrix of ruby crystals."

"I wonder you wear the thing," said the chubby-faced youth of the F