"It's gold!" she cried.
We flashed our torches right and left. It was true. Great golden piles sloped away from us. The fragments of the bags that once had held this wealth projected from the multitude of coins. At the end of the chamber the piles mounted to the roof. There were stray rivulets of gold that trickled almost to the mouth of the passage. To the left stood several tiers of ancient chests. The first yielded at once to the point of Hugh's knife. The rotten wood cut like cardboard. When he flung the lid back it fell apart, but we scarcely noticed it for the dazzling glamor of the gems that seemed almost to fight to escape from their centuries-long imprisonment.
Jewels and jewelry and massive plate were heaped in indiscriminate confusion, huge salvers, cups, chalices, amphoræ, bracelets, armlets, amulets, brooches, necklaces, rings beyond number—and running in and out of the set stones, the endless profusion of unmounted gems, diamonds, amethysts, rubies, opals, pearls, sapphires, topazes, garnets, turquoises, emeralds, and others I could not name.
I picked up what had been a king's crown, a barbaric headdress of crude unalloyed gold, red and soft, set with enormous uncut stones. Next to it was a chased bracelet that might have come from the goldsmiths' shops of Athens in the classic age. The quantity of precious things was almost inconceivable. And this was but one of a score of chests.
King stooped and scooped up a handful of gold pieces from the floor, broad, finely-minted, bearing the double-headed eagle of Byzantium and the busts and figures of dead-and-gone Emperors.
"Was there ever such a find?" he muttered. "What a chance for the numismatists! See! Here is a Byzant of Artavasdos the Usurper. I never saw one before. It was not known that he had coined money. And here is the likeness of Arcadius, first of the Eastern Emperors."
Betty threw her arms around Hugh, as shameless, for the moment, as Kara.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she murmured. "It's as much as you thought it would be, isn't it?"
Hugh was dazed.
"As much? By Jove, sweetheart, I—I never dreamed of anything like this! I—really, you know, I didn't honestly believe in it before. I used to pretend to make myself carry on. I told myself it was up to me to see the thing through on Uncle James's account. But—this! I say, Professor, how much do you suppose there is here?"