The Sepoy, at the conclusion of a hearty repast, which the spinster witnessed with famished envy and Raikes considered with ascetic disapproval, looked, with a scarcely concealed disdain, into the furtive, troubled eyes of the miser and said: "I will see you to-night?"

"Yes," replied Raikes promptly. "I will be there."

"Very well; I will not return until the time appointed," said the Sepoy.

"I expect to show you a rarity."

"Another brilliant aggravation?" asked Raikes.

"Ah!" laughed the Sepoy, "is that your estimation of the sapphire?"

"Yes," returned Raikes with acid frankness. "To be permitted to appropriate the gleam and the radiance; to comprehend the cunning of the facets; to appraise its magnificent bulk intelligently, and witness the careless possession by another of all these beatitudes, I think that constitutes an aggravation."

"It has been known to degenerate into a temptation," continued the Sepoy, reflecting the cynical humor of the other.

"Aye!" admitted Raikes, "and has concluded in surrender."

With this the strangely assorted trio left the table directly, the Sepoy to his problematical business, the spinster to escape the reprimand foreshadowed in the eyes of her brother, and Raikes to keep his treasures under malicious surveillance.

All that day his diseased mind tortured itself with impossible theories and absurd speculations, until his attempts to explain the curious substitution degenerated into a perfect chaos of despair and bewilderment.

With an impatience he could not explain, Raikes at last presented himself at the apartment of the Sepoy as the hour of ten was striking.

He was greeted by the curious individual within with a demeanor which somehow offended Raikes with the impression that his prompt eagerness was the subject of amused calculation.

His irritation, however, was not permitted to develop, for no sooner had he seated himself in the chair indicated by his host than the latter placed upon the table, within easy reach of his harassed visitor, a small box of leather and directed him to press the spring.

Anticipating something of the nature of the contents of the case from the material of which it was made, Raikes, forgetting for the moment the futility of the day's researches, pressed his bony thumb upon the spring, and at once the lid flew back like a protest, disclosing the most superb diamond it had ever been his misfortune to see and not possess.

"Ah!" he cried in an ecstasy of tantalized contemplation, "the glass, the glass! Anything so precious must have had commensurate treatment.

What color, what clarity, what bulk!" and as the unhappy creature yielded to that species of intoxication which even the grace of God seems unable to ameliorate, the Sepoy, with the easy poise and balance of intonation and phrase which had served as such facile vehicles for the previous instalments, began:

"When the bewildered prince realized the meaning of the worthless heap in the recess, and calculated, with familiar appraisement, the immense loss represented by the senseless substitution, he stood for a moment destitute of all dignity and as impotent as the meanest of his household.

"His thin, fine lips, which usually held such firm partnership and divided his words with such cynical scission, relaxed separately into the inane lines of superstitious fear, and the luster of his restless eyes seemed to have degenerated into that surrounding dullness of sickly white which would have provided the impressionable Lal Lu with an easy fortitude to deny the approaches of this semi-potentate.

"The next instant, like the doubled blade of Toledo steel, the prince recoiled to his lithe stature, and the customary brightness of his eyes returned shadowed with a degree of crafty reflection.

"One by one, lest a stray gem might be collected with the worthless debris, like the crew of Ulysses clinging to the sheep of the Cyclops, Prince Otondo removed the pebbles which intruded their sordid presence in this scintillant treasure-trove like a motley of base subjects in an assemblage of the nobility.

"When the last of these worthless objects had been cleared from the recess, the prince closed the panel, and seating himself before the rayless heap, surrendered himself to moody reflection, like a disabled enthusiast confronted by his disillusions.

"How did these pebbles reach this hiding place?

"In asking himself the question, the prince had absolute assurance that it was impossible for any one to enter his sleeping-apartment without his knowledge.

"The puzzled man also recollected, with a shudder, which he alone could explain, that he had taken radical means of making it impossible for the artisan who had contrived the hidden treasury to reveal its existence.

"He was positive, too, when he had retired the night before, that his jewels were undisturbed.

"Why just this exchange of a handful?

"For what reason had not double the quantity been removed? Nay, why not all, since it was possible to abstract a portion?

"At this question the eerie iteration of the merchant returned to his mind:

"'Pebbles for diamonds!'

"At once the distasteful alternative upon which it was based recurred to him.

"A quick radiation illumined his mind, and subsided to darkness as promptly.

"Ram Lal!

"It was he who had indicated the substitution. But the merchant could no more enter the room in which the prince was seated at this moment than the most abject menial in the palace.

"Still, the merchant had been able to predict the disaster.

"Some sort of association existed, but what it was, considered with the impracticability of unobserved entrance and exit, was beyond his comprehension.

"The incredible condition existed.

"In the light of its outrageous improbability, and the insuperable obstacles in the way of its accomplishment, the prince found himself compelled to dismiss every hypothesis.

"Still, he could subject Ram Lal to an investigation that would, at least, extort a confession as to his ability to allude to the episode in advance.

"In the meantime, with true Oriental craft, the prince determined to say nothing of his loss, and present an impassive demeanor to those by whom he was surrounded.

"With this purpose the prince proceeded to the apartment beyond, and was about to strike the gong to summon the servant charged with the preparation of his morning repast, when his attention was attracted to a slip of folded paper fluttering from the edge of the table-top and held in place by a diminutive bronze Buddha.

"With the weird certainty that this beckoning paper was another unaccountable feature of the savage perplexity he was compelled to endure, the prince, approaching, grasped the folded sheet with eager, trembling hands and exposed its inner surface to his vivid glance.

"'Ah!' With a burning sensation about his eyes, a fever of harassed impatience in his brain, and a sense of suffocation and impotent rage, he read:

"'MOST ILLUSTRIOUS!

"'Unless Lal Lu is returned to her father by nightfall, another handful of precious stones will be replaced by as many pebbles.

"'And this to warn thee:

"'The native troops at Meerut are in revolt.

"'They have shot the regimental officers, and have put to death every European they could find.

"'They are now on their way to Delhi to proclaim Dahbur Dhu, thy grandfather, sovereign of Hindustan.

"'The Moghul is old.