urn to the key, and flung
back the lid of the box. I happened just then to glance at the three
chiefs, and saw that they were watching us as a cat watches at a
mouse-hole; but so soon as they saw me observing them they turned their
eyes away so quickly that I hardly felt sure that I had seen them.

Inside of the box was a great lot of dried palm-leaf fibre wrapped
around a ball of cotton, which Mr. Longways lifted very carefully and
gently. Opening this, he came upon a little roll of dressed skin like
the chamois-leather such as the jewellers and watch-makers use, and
which was tied all about very carefully with a stout cord of palm fibre.
Mr. Longways began laboriously to untie the knot in this cord, and,
though I cannot tell why, there was something about the whole business
that set my heart to beating very thickly and heavily within my breast.

Mr. Longways looked up under his brows at me with a very curious leer.
"Did you ever hear," says he, "of The Rose of Paradise?"

[Illustration: MR. LONGWAYS LOOKED UP UNDER HIS BROWN EYES AT ME WITH A
VERY CURIOUS LEER.]

I shook my head.

"Then I'll show her to you," said he; and he began unwinding the cord
from about the roll of soft leather, the folds of which he presently
opened. Then, as I looked down into his hand and saw what lay within the
dressed skin, I was so struck with amazement that I could not find
either breath or tongue to utter one single word.

III.

_It was a ruby, the most beautiful I had ever seen, and about the
bigness of a pigeon's egg._

At the sight of this prodigious jewel I was so disturbed in my spirits
that I trembled as though with an ague, while the sweat started out of
my forehead in great drops. "For the love of the Lord, put it up, man!"
I cried, so soon as I could find breath and wits.

There was something in my voice that must have frightened Mr. Longways,
for he looked mightily disturbed and taken aback; but he presently tried
to pass it off for a jest. "Come, come," says he, as he wrapped up the
stone in the soft leather again--"come, come; it's all between friend
and friend, and no harm done." But to this I answered not a word, but
began walking up and down the cabin, so affected by what I had seen that
I could neither recover my spirits nor regain my composure. The more I
thought over the business the less I liked it; for if anything should
now happen to the stone, and it should be lost, every suspicion would
fall upo