here amassed and presented with this attractive
difference--that they had not been absurdly polished out of recognition,
or tortured into horrible "artistic" shapes of brooch, or earring, or
paper-knife, or ash-tray, but had been left with all their simple
sea-magic upon them--as they might have been heaped up by the sea itself
in some moonlit grotto, paved with white sand.

I pushed open the door. There was no one there. The little store was
evidently left to take care of itself. Inside, it was like an old
curiosity shop of the sea, every available inch of space, rough tables
and walls, littered and hung with the queer and lovely bric-a-brac of
the sea. Presently a tiny girl came in as it seemed from nowhere, and
said she would fetch her father. In a moment or two he came, a tall
weathered Englishman of the sailor type, brown and lean, with lonely
blue eyes.

"You don't seem afraid of thieves," I remarked.

"It ain't a jewelry store," he said, with the curious soft sing-song
intonation of the Nassau "conch."

"That's just what I was thinking it was," I said.

"I know what you mean," he replied, his lonely face lighting up as faces
do at unexpected understanding in a stranger. "Of course, there are some
that feel that way, but they're few and far between."

"Not enough to make a fortune out of?"

"O! I do pretty well," he said; "I mustn't complain. Money's not
everything, you see, in a business like this. There's going after the
things, you know. One's got to count that in too."

I looked at him in some surprise. I had met something even rarer than
the things he traded in. I had met a merchant of dreams, to whom the
mere handling of his merchandise seemed sufficient profit: "There's
going after the things, you know. One's got to count that in too."

Naturally we were neck-deep in talk in a moment. I wanted to hear all he
cared to tell me about "going after the things"--such "things"!--and he
was nothing loth, as he took up one strange or beautiful object after
another, his face aglow, and he quite evidently without a thought of
doing business, and told me all about them--how and where he got them,
and so forth.

"But," he said presently, encouraged by my unfeigned interest, "I should
like to show you a few rarer things I have in the house, and which I
wouldn't sell, or even show to every one. If you'd honour me by taking a
cup of tea, we might look them over."

So we left the little store, with its door un