a moment she stood bewildered, with a strange look in her eyes
of grief, and almost of despair.

"Sheila, my darling, you must go below now," said her companion: "you
are almost dead with cold."

She looked at him for a moment, as though she had scarcely heard what
he said. But his eyes were full of pity for her: he drew her closer
to him, and put his arms round her, and then she hid her head in his
bosom and sobbed there like a child.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE EMERALD.

Dutens and several others who have written upon gems and precious
stones during the last two centuries have asserted that the ancients
were unacquainted with the true emerald, and that Heliodorus, when
speaking nearly two thousand years ago of "gems green as a meadow in
the spring," or Pliny, when describing stone of a "soft green lustre,"
referred to the peridot, the plasma, the malachite, or the far rarer
gem, the green sapphire. But the antiquary has come to the rescue with
the treasures of the despoiled mounds of Tuscany, the exposed ashes of
Herculaneum and Pompeii, and now exhibits emeralds which were mounted
in gold two thousand years before Columbus dreamed of the New World,
or Pizarro and his remorseless band gathered the precious stones by
the hundred-weight from the spoils of Peru. Although these specimens
of antique jewelry set with emeralds may be numbered by the score or
more in the museums and "reliquaries" of Europe, but very few engraved
emeralds have descended to us from ancient times: This rarity is not
due to the hardness of the stone, for the ancient lapidaries cut the
difficult and still harder sapphire: therefore we must believe the
statement of the early gem-writers that the emerald was exempted
from the glyptic art by common consent on account of its beauty and
costliness.

The emerald is now one of the rarest of gems, and its scarcity gives
rise to the inquiry as to what has become of the abundant shower of
emeralds which fairly rained upon Spain during the early days of the
conquest of Mexico and Peru, bringing down the value of fine stones
to a trifling price. As with all commercial articles, there is a waste
and loss to be accounted for during the wear of three centuries,
but this alone will not explain their present rarity in civilized
countries. Even in the times of Charles II., when the destitution of
the country was extreme, the dukes of Infantado and Albuquerque had
millions in diamonds, rubies and precio