those peculiar glances
which had so astonished them before.

"I should like to see some of your work," said Jack.

"I thought you would," said Lenoir, with a quiet chuckle.

Lenoir led the way into the next cellar or cavern, and here they came
suddenly upon a complete change of scene.

Here they saw a furnace, with melting pots, bars of metal, moulds,
files, batteries, and all the necessary accessories for the manufacture
of medals.

Upon a flat stone slab was a pile of medals, all of the same pattern
precisely.

"Just examine those, Mr. Harkaway," said Pierre Lenoir, "and tell me
what you think them."

Jack put his finger through the glittering heap, and they fell to the
table with a bright clear ring that considerably astonished him.

"Why, they are silver!"

Lenoir smiled.

"Very good, aren't they?"

"Very!"

Jack here made a discovery, upon examining them more closely.

"They are five-franc pieces!" he said, with a puzzled expression.

"Of course they are--and beauties they are too!"

"There's not much risk in getting rid of those, I should say?"

"Risk!" iterated Harry Girdwood.

"Aye!"

"Why risk?"

"I mean that no one could detect the difference very easily. Why, they
deceived you," he added, turning to Jack, with an air of conscious
pride.

"Upon my life, I don't understand what you mean," said Jack.

Lenoir looked serious for a moment.

Then he burst out into a boisterous fit of merriment.

"You are really over-cautious, young gentleman," he said.

"Over-cautious?"

"Why, yes--why, yes. Wherefore this reserve? Why should you pretend not
to understand? Don't you see," he added, with a cunning leer, "that I
can make these medals as perfectly as they can at the Hotel de la
Monnaie, our French Mint?"

"So I see," said Jack.

A faint light began to dawn upon Harry Girdwood--not too soon, the
reader will say.

"It is rather a dangerous pastime, Mr. Lenoir, this medalling fancy of
yours," he said.

"No," said Lenoir, pointedly, "the danger is not there; the danger of
this pastime, as you call it, is in disposing of my beautiful medals."

"Dear me, sir," said Mr. Mole. "Do you sell them?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"The five-franc pieces two francs and a half," replied Lenoir, "and so
on throughout until we get up to the louis, the twenty-franc pieces;
those I can do for seven francs. You can pass them without risk."

This told all.

Jack and his friends were astounded.