e might realize millions. Millions!"

He paused and looked for my sympathy. His eyes shone
hungrily. "To think," said he, "that I am on the verge of it all,
and here!

"I had," he proceeded, "about a thousand pounds when I was
twenty-one, and this, I thought, eked out by a little teaching,
would keep my researches going. A year or two was spent in study,
at Berlin chiefly, and then I continued on my own account. The
trouble was the secrecy. You see, if once I had let out what I was
doing, other men might have been spurred on by my belief in the
practicability of the idea; and I do not pretend to be such a
genius as to have been sure of coming in first, in the case of a
race for the discovery. And you see it was important that if I
really meant to make a pile, people should not know it was an
artificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton.
So I had to work all alone. At first I had a little laboratory,
but as my resources began to run out I had to conduct my
experiments in a wretched unfurnished room in Kentish Town, where
I slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my
apparatus. The money simply flowed away. I grudged myself
everything except scientific appliances. I tried to keep things
going by a little teaching, but I am not a very good teacher, and
I have no university degree, nor very much education except in
chemistry, and I found I had to give a lot of time and labour for
precious little money. But I got nearer and nearer the thing.
Three years ago I settled the problem of the composition of the
flux, and got near the pressure by putting this flux of mine and a
certain carbon composition into a closed-up gun-barrel, filling up
with water, sealing tightly, and heating."

He paused.

"Rather risky," said I.

"Yes. It burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of my
apparatus; but I got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless.
Following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon the molten
mixture from which the things were to crystallise, I hit upon some
researches of Daubree's at the Paris _Laboratorie des Poudres et
Salpetres_. He exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel
cylinder, too strong to burst, and I found he could crush rocks
into a muck not unlike the South African bed in which diamonds are
found. It was a tremendous strain on my resources, but I got a
steel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern. I put in all
my stuff and my explo