o'clock one morning, late in August, chance
directed him into the shop.

The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he
perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to
be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter
towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters,
impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire
interior.

It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of
optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the
rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior,
but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the
crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of
the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a
calling. He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing
within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere
of some luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view,
he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the
crystal none the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he lifted it
out of the light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. It
remained bright for some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and
went out. He placed it in the thin streak of daylight, and its
luminousness was almost immediately restored.

So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of Mr.
Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which
had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a perfect
darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did
undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however,
that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally
visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger--whose name will be familiar to the
scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute--was quite
unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its
appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even
with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably: his vision was most
vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue.

Now, from the outset, this light in the crystal exercised a curious
fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his