pen with a vengeance, one might say. Like that unfortunate Humpty
Dumpty, who, so the chroniclers tell us, sat on a wall, surely "all the
king's horses and all the king's men" never could put Pugh's puzzle
together again!

The marquetry had resolved itself into its component parts. How those
parts had ever been joined was a mystery. They had been laid upon no
foundation, as is the case with ordinary inlaid work. The several pieces
of wood were not only of different shapes and sizes, but they were as thin
as the thinnest veneer; yet the box had been formed by simply joining them
together. The man who made that box must have been possessed of ingenuity
worthy of a better cause.

I perceived how the puzzle had been worked. The box had contained an
arrangement of springs, which, on being released, had expanded themselves
in different directions until their mere expansion had rent the box to
pieces. There were the springs, lying amid the ruin they had caused.

There was something else amid that ruin besides those springs; there was a
small piece of writing paper. I took it up. On the reverse side of it was
written in a minute, crabbed hand: "A Present For You." What was a present
for me? I looked, and, not for the first time since I had caught sight of
Pugh's precious puzzle, could scarcely believe my eyes.

There, poised between two upright wires, the bent ends of which held it
aloft in the air, was either a piece of glass or--a crystal. The scrap of
writing paper had exactly covered it. I understood what it was, when Pugh
and I had tapped with the hammer, had caused the answering taps to proceed
from within. Our taps caused the wires to oscillate, and in these
oscillations the crystal, which they held suspended, had touched the side
of the box.

I looked again at the piece of paper. "A Present For You." Was _this_ the
present--this crystal? I regarded it intently.

"It _can't_ be a diamond."

The idea was ridiculous, absurd. No man in his senses would place a
diamond inside a twopenny-halfpenny puzzle box. The thing was as big as a
walnut! And yet--I am a pretty good judge of precious stones--if it was
not an uncut diamond it was the best imitation I had seen. I took it up. I
examined it closely. The more closely I examined it, the more my wonder
grew.

"It _is_ a diamond!"

And yet the idea was too preposterous for credence. Who would present a
diamond as big as a walnut with a trumpery puzzle? Besides, all the