s striking blind fists in
the direction where he judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; the
contents of his pockets--a motley show--were strewing the lawn. Somehow,
though I had been put through a similar performance myself an hour or
two ago, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.

Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank;
below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could reach, a
narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away, straight along the
horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was blowing, clear and thin; it
sounded like the golden streak grown audible, while the gold seemed the
visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of
music and colour. I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as
if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with me,
relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my hand once more
to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob--as
it were--of relief, the secret drawer sprang open.

I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing
light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to
expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay
in shivers at my feet. No ingots nor dollars were here, to crown me the
little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its
gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely
and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like
so many card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.

[Illustration: '_I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine
it in the failing light_']

And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay within that
drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as I
recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at the making of it.
Two tarnished gilt buttons--naval, apparently--a portrait of a monarch
unknown to me, cut from some antique print and deftly coloured by hand
in just my own bold style of brush-work--some foreign copper coins,
thicker and clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself--and a list of
birds'-eggs, with names of the places where they had been found. Also, a
ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still faintly aromatic! It
was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had happened u