Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/148

tissue of my sensibility. Then I heard shouts in the garden, a dog's deep bay, and a voice crying: "Quick! Here's the ladder."

That narrow slip of pavement, where I sat cross-legged like a Buddha, was clearly no place for me. Mechanically I picked up the object that had struck against my foot, slipped across the road, and was soon out of earshot of the voices.

Upon examination, my find proved to be an oval case made of very hard wood, similar in shape to the Raja of Pepperthala's stolen treasure, but smaller. On pressing a little deflection at the extreme end the case flew open. It contained nothing but an ordinary stone, in size and shape something like a hen's egg. When I arrived home I examined the stone minutely, but although it was unlike other stones one might pick up in Grosvenor Place, I could discover nothing remarkable about its appearance. It bristled all over with little corrugations and spikes. A space of about an inch square had been polished, and on this shining surface I detected three vague nebulous markings; the colour was black, and the thing was moist to the touch.

I wrote the article, and soon after midnight retired to bed, after emptying, according to habit, the contents of my pockets upon a table that stands in the centre of my room. When I awoke, considerably after my usual hour, the sun was shining through the window, and I observed, in the drowsy, semi-conscious way we note things in the first moment of waking, that soon the broad white beam of sunlight which streamed through the window would fall upon the heterogeneous collection of articles that I had thrown upon the table the night before. Then I fell asleep again. When I re-awoke the articles lay full in the glare of the sunshine—knife, keys, match-box, and, towering above them all, the big stone, flanked by its ragged-edged shadow.I gazed