JEWEL; that's the word."

Very carefully he removed the rest of the excelsior, and lifting the
ponderous Tooth from its box, set it upon the marble-top centre table.
How immense it looked in that little room! The thing was tremendous,
overpowering--the tooth of a gigantic fossil, golden and dazzling.
Beside it everything seemed dwarfed. Even McTeague himself, big boned
and enormous as he was, shrank and dwindled in the presence of the
monster. As for an instant he bore it in his hands, it was like a puny
Gulliver struggling with the molar of some vast Brobdingnag.

The dentist circled about that golden wonder, gasping with delight
and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it were
something sacred. At every moment his thought returned to Trina.
No, never was there such a little woman as his--the very thing he
wanted--how had she remembered? And the money, where had that come from?
No one knew better than he how expensive were these signs; not another
dentist on Polk Street could afford one. Where, then, had Trina found
the money? It came out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt.

But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright as a
mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light of
its own! No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did
the cheap German gilt impostures. What would that other dentist, that
poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, say when he
should see this marvellous molar run out from McTeague's bay window like
a flag of defiance? No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of
envy; would be positively sick with jealousy. If McTeague could only see
his face at the moment!

For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little "Parlor," gazing
ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content. The whole room
took on a different aspect because of it. The stone pug dog before the
little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the canary woke and
chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter than the bars of its
little prison. Lorenzo de' Medici, in the steel engraving, sitting in
the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing out of the corner of
one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused rifle manufacturer's
calendar seemed to fade and pale in the brilliance of this greater
glory.

At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed,
undressing himself with his eyes sti