“Hurrah!” yelled the lad. “Silver! Look, look!”
“I do not see any,” said the Vicar, taking out his eye-glasses to put on, “only a greasy look on the top of the dirty water.”
“No, sir, silver—silver,” cried Tom excitedly. “I can see no end of tiny specks floating. Look, uncle. Don’t you see?”
“Yes, Tom, you are right,” said Uncle Richard, working away at rocking the glass to and fro.
“Oh yes, I can see it now, glittering on the surface,” cried the Vicar, as excitedly as the boy. “Wonderful! quite large filmy patches floating. My dear Brandon, it really is very grand.”
“Let me rock it now, uncle, to rest you,” cried Tom.
“No; only a few minutes more, Tom, and then it may rest and finish.”
“How long does it take?” said the Vicar.
“Oh, from ten to twenty minutes,” said Uncle Richard; and at the end of a quarter of an hour, which had passed very quickly, so interested were they all, he ceased rocking the glass and left the face immersed in the murky solution, which had resembled very dirty blackish water, with faint traces of silvery film on the surface.
At the end of another five minutes the film was in larger patches, and at the end of another similar lapse of time Uncle Richard declared his experiment so far at an end, and lifted the piece of glass out dripping and dirty, leaving the water fairly clear, but with a thick sediment at the bottom, while the dripping face of the glass, instead of being brilliant polished glass, was seen to be coated over with a drabby-white or greyish film.