“‘The gleaming hoard still shot its varied lightnings. The royal sapphire still crowned its priceless apex. To his starting eyes his treasure was not a whit diminished, but directly in front, and at the base of the precious heap, lay as many as would make a heaping handful of pebbles.”
As the Sepoy reached this startling climax in his recital, the even modulations of his voice ceased abruptly.
Raikes, missing the somnolent monotone, looked up quickly.
The eyes of the Sepoy were fixed upon him with a gleam in his glance not unlike that of the sapphire upon which the miser had been engaged during the whole of this singular narrative.
“That is a weird tale,” he said at last. “Why do you pause at such a point? What is the conclusion?”
“That is some distance away yet,” replied the Sepoy. “If you care to continue, I will resume the thread at this time to-morrow evening.”
“Very well,” answered Raikes with some impatience, “I will be here. I must, at least, congratulate you upon your observance of the proprieties in tale-telling; you manage to pause at the proper places.”
“You are curious, then, to hear the rest?”
“Naturally,” replied Raikes, with the sour candor which distinguished him. “The situation you describe I can appreciate—the loser confronted with his loss—and I am to conjecture his attitude until to-morrow night. Very well, I bid you good evening,” and Raikes, with a curt inclination of the head, which made a travesty of his intention to be courteous, vanished through the doorway.