ook! See!" He thrust the blade of a pocket
knife into the doll and with one sweep ripped it open, and dipping in
his fingers drew from cotton wool and rags with which the thing
was stuffed a slim, close-stoppered glass vial in which something
that glowed and gave off constant sparks of light shimmered and
burnt with a restless fire.

"Is this it, Doctor?" he said, holding the thing up.

"Yes! Oh, my God, yes!" he cried out as he clutched at it. "A wonder
of the heavens, sure, that the child wasn't disfigured for life or
perhaps kilt forever. A half grain of it--a half grain of radium,
ladies and gentlemen--enough to burn a hole through the divvle
himself, if he lay long enough agin it."

"Radium!" The word was voiced on every side, and the two women and
two men crowded close to look at the thing. "Radium in the doll?
Radium? I say, Deland--I mean to say, Mr. Cleek--in God's name, who
could have put the cursed thing there?"

"Your magpie, Mr. Essington," replied Cleek, and with that brief
preface told of Martha, the nurse, and of the torn doll and of the
magpie that flew into the room while the girl was away.

"The wretched thing must have picked it up when the doctor fell
and lost consciousness and the open bag lay unguarded," he said.
"And with its propensity for stealing and hiding things it flew
with it into the nursery and hid it in the torn doll. Martha did
not see it, of course, when she sewed the doll up, but the scratch
she received from the magpie presented a raw surface to the action
of the mineral and its effect was instant and most violent. What's
that? No, Mr. Carruthers--no one is guilty; no one has even tried to
injure his lordship. Chance only is to blame--and Chance cannot be
punished. As for the rest, do me a favour, dear friend, in place
of any other kind of reward. Look to it that this young chap here
gets enough out of the income of the estate to continue his course
at Oxford and--that's all."

It was not, however; for while he was still speaking a strange and
even startling interruption occurred.

A liveried servant, pushing the door open gently, stepped into the
room bearing a small silver salver upon which a letter lay.

"Well, upon my word, Johnston, this is rather an original sort of
performance, isn't it?" exclaimed Carruthers, indignant over the
intrusion.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I did knock," he apologized. "I knocked
twice, in fact, but no one seemed to hear; and as I had