imagination, lifted her gaze
furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the
big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon
into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.

Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box--a
toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of
water-colours and crayon pencils.

Some centuries ago Pandora's box let loose a world of troubles; Herr
Wilner's box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child
whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.

It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of
some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong--rupee silver,
perhaps--strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in
shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a
silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage;
and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.

Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of
articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest
care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother's command, returned
to their several places in Herr Wilner's box.

There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers
in sheaths of fretted silver--never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly
understood, except by the child's father.

There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the
unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and
cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child's mother, much to
the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.

There were writing materials of sandalwood, a few sea shells, a dozen
books in German with many steel plate engravings; also a red Turkish
fez with a dark blue tassel; two pairs of gold-rimmed spectacles;
several tobacco pipes of Dresden porcelain, a case full of instruments
for mechanical drawing, a thick blank book bound in calf and
containing the diary of the late Herr Wilner down to within a few
minutes before his death.

Also there was a figure in bronze, encrusted with tarnished gold and
faded traces of polychrome decoration.

Erlik, the Yellow Devil, as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to
be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled
faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed
inside, into which a few loose fragmen