"You shall see," answered the master, and he set down the box beside the lamp, on the broad stone at the mouth of the annealing oven. "It is better that you should see for yourself."
He unlocked the box and took out what seemed to be a small book, carefully tied up in a sheet of parchment. The ends of the silk cord below the knot were pinched in a broad red seal. Zorzi examined the wax.
"You sealed it with a glass seal," he observed. "It would not be hard to make another."
"Do you think it would be so easy?" asked Beroviero, who had made the seal himself many years ago.
Zorzi held the impression nearer to the lamp and scrutinised it closely.
"No one will have a chance to try," he said, with a slight gesture of indifference. "It might not be so easy."
The old man looked at him a moment, as if hesitating, and then put the packet back into the box and locked the latter with the key that hung from his neck by a small silver chain.
"I trust you," he said, and he gave the box to Zorzi, to be deposited in the hole.
Zorzi stood up, and taking a little tow from the supply used for cleaning the blow-pipes, he dipped it into the oil of the lamp and proceeded to grease the box carefully before hiding it.
"It would rust," he explained.