easures" whose
makers were still plying the trade and battening upon the ignorance of
collectors.

"Now, here's a thing I am particularly proud of," said the gulled old
man, reaching into one of the cases and holding out for Cleek's
admiration an irregular disc of dull, hammered gold that had an
iridescent beetle embedded in the flat face of it. "This scarab, Mr.
Rickaby, has helped to make history, as one might say. It was once the
property of Cleopatra. I was obliged to make two trips to Egypt before I
could persuade the owner to part with it. I am always conscious of a
certain sense of awe, Mr. Rickaby, when I touch this wonderful thing. To
think, sir, to think! that this bauble once rested on the bosom of that
marvellous woman; that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched
it; that Ptolemy Auletse knew all about it, and that it is older, sir,
than the Christian religion itself!"

He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleek to see
and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying
glass.

"Wonderful, most wonderful!" observed Cleek, bending over the spurious
gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of
studying the fraud, but to examine something he had just
noticed--something round and red and angry-looking--which marked the
palm itself, at the base of the middle finger. "No wonder you are proud
of such a prize. I think I should go off my head with rapture if I owned
an antique like that. But, pardon me, have you met with an accident, Mr.
Bawdrey? That's an ugly place you have on your palm."

"That? Oh, that's nothing," he answered gaily. "It itches a great deal
at times, but otherwise it isn't troublesome. I can't think how in the
world I got it, to tell the truth. It came out as a sort of red blister
in the beginning, and since it broke it has been spreading a great deal.
But, really, it doesn't amount to anything at all."

"Oh, that's just like you, dad," put in Philip, "always making light of
the wretched thing. I notice one thing, however, Rickaby, it seems to
grow worse instead of better. And dad knows as well as I do when it
began. It came out suddenly about a fortnight ago, after he had been
holding some green worsted for my stepmother to wind into balls. Just
look at it, will you, old chap?"

"Nonsense, nonsense!" chimed in the old man laughingly. "Don't mind the
silly boy, Mr. Rickaby. He will have it that that green worsted is