the. However, here is a test."

There was a wheel close by the speaker. It was worked by a treadle. It was
more like a superior sort of traveling-tinker's grindstone than anything
else. The man behind the counter put his foot upon the treadle. The wheel
began to revolve. He brought the crystal into contact with the swiftly
revolving wheel. There was a s--s--sh! And, in an instant, his hand was
empty; the crystal had vanished into air.

"Good heavens!" he gasped. I never saw such a look of amazement on a human
countenance before. "It's splintered!"

POSTSCRIPT

It _was_ a diamond, although it _had_ splintered. In that fact lay the
point of the joke. The man behind the counter had not been wrong;
examination of such dust as could be collected proved that fact beyond a
doubt. It was declared by experts that the diamond, at some period of its
history, had been subjected to intense and continuing heat. The result had
been to make it as brittle as glass.

There could be no doubt that its original owner had been an expert too. He
knew where he got it from, and he probably knew what it had endured. He
was aware that, from a mercantile point of view, it was worthless; it
could never have been cut. So, having a turn for humor of a peculiar kind,
he had devoted days, and weeks, and possibly months, to the construction
of that puzzle. He had placed the diamond inside, and he had enjoyed, in
anticipation and in imagination, the Alnaschar visions of the lucky
finder.

Pugh blamed me for the catastrophe. He said, and still says, that if I had
not, in a measure, and quite gratuitously, insisted on a test, the man
behind the counter would have been satisfied with the evidence of his
organs of vision, and we should have been richer by ten thousand pounds.
But I satisfy my conscience with the reflection that what I did at any
rate was honest, though, at the same time, I am perfectly well aware that
such a reflection gives Pugh no sort of satisfaction.

_The Great Valdez Sapphire_

I know more about it than anyone else in the world, its present owner not
excepted. I can give its whole history, from the Cingalese who found it,
the Spanish adventurer who stole it, the cardinal who bought it, the Pope
who graciously accepted it, the favored son of the Church who received it,
the gay and giddy duchess who pawned it, down to the eminent prelate who
now holds it in trust as a family heirloom.

It will occupy a chapter to itse