unks a
long, loose garment of pale-gray silk. Apparently this beautiful robe
was intended to serve as a dressing-gown, and as such Cosmo Waynflete
utilized it immediately. The ample folds fell softly about him, and the
rich silk itself seemed to be soothing to his limbs, so delicate was
its fibre and so carefully had it been woven. Around the full skirt
there was embroidery of threads of gold, and again on the open and
flowing sleeves. With the skilful freedom of Japanese art the pattern
of this decoration seemed to suggest the shrubbery about a spring, for
there were strange plants with huge leaves broadly outlined by the
golden threads, and in the midst of them water was seen bubbling from
the earth and lapping gently over the edge of the fountain. As the
returned wanderer thrust his arms into the dressing-gown with its
symbolic embroidery on the skirt and sleeves, he remembered distinctly
the dismal day when he had bought it in a little curiosity-shop in
Nuremberg; and as he fastened across his chest one by one the loops of
silken cord to the three coins which served as buttons down the front
of the robe, he recalled also the time and the place where he had
picked up each of these pieces of gold and silver, one after another.
The first of them was a Persian daric, which he had purchased from a
dealer on the Grand Canal in Venice; and the second was a Spanish peso
struck under Philip II. at Potosi, which he had found in a stall on the
embankment of the Quay Voltaire, in Paris; and the third was a York
shilling, which he had bought from the man who had turned it up in
ploughing a field that sloped to the Hudson near Sleepy Hollow.

Having thus wrapped himself in this unusual dressing-gown with its
unexpected buttons of gold and silver, Cosmo Waynflete went back into
the front room. He dropped into the arm-chair before the fire. It was
with a smile of physical satisfaction that he stretched out his feet to
the hickory blaze.

The afternoon was drawing on, and in New York the sun sets early on
Christmas day. The red rays shot into the window almost horizontally,
and they filled the crystal globe with a curious light. Cosmo Waynflete
lay back in his easy-chair, with his Japanese robe about him, and gazed
intently at the beautiful ball which seemed like a bubble of air and
water. His mind went back to the afternoon in April, two years before,
when he had found that crystal sphere in a Japanese shop within sight
of the in