as it shaped itself before my eyes, caused them
to stare in wrathful incredulity, caused my heart to sink at first in
dismay and then to swell in mad indignation, caused my blood to turn
to gall and my thoughts to very bitterness. For this was what I
read:--

On the handle were engraved in large capitals the initials A. T.
with the date MDCCCXII. Alone the shaft, from handle to wards, ran
on either side the following sentence in old English lettering:--

THY HOUSE IS SET UPON THE SANDS AND THY HOPES BY A DEAD MAN.

This was all. This short sentence was the sum of all the vain quest
on which my father had met his end. "Thy house is set upon the
sands," and even now had crumbled away beneath Amos Trenoweth's curse
"Thy hopes by a dead man," and even now he on whom our hopes had
rested, lay upstairs a pitiful corpse. Was ever mockery more
fiendish? As the full cruelty of the words broke in upon me, once
again I seemed to hear the awful cry from the sea, but now among its
voices rang a fearful laugh as though Amos Trenoweth's soul were
making merry in hell over his grim jest--the slaughter of his son and
his son's wife.

White with desperate passion, I turned and hurled the accursed key
across the room into the blazing hearth.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

THE FINDING OF THE GREAT RUBY.

CHAPTER I.

TELLS HOW THOMAS LOVEDAY AND I WENT IN SEARCH OF FORTUNE.

Seeing that these pages do not profess to be an autobiography, but
rather the plain chronicle of certain events connected with the Great
Ruby of Ceylon, I conceive myself entitled to the reader's pardon if
I do some violence to the art of the narrator, and here ask leave to
pass by, with but slight allusion, some fourteen years. This I do
because the influence of this mysterious jewel, although it has
indelibly coloured my life, has been sensibly exercised during two
periods alone--periods short in themselves, but nevertheless long
enough to determine between them every current of my destiny, and to
supply an interpretation for my every action.

I am the more concerned with advertising the reader of this, as on
looking back upon what I have written with an eye as far as may be
impartial, I have not failed to note one obvious criticism that will
be passed upon me. "How," it will be asked, "could any boy barely
eight years of age conceive the thoughts and entertain the emotions
there attributed to Jasper Trenoweth?"

The criticism