One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle, letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in the stones—blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red—melted, sprayed, and scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and emotion.
With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay, instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at, tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and flashing.
But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement. He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was doing.
"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
"No," Michael said. "Why?"
He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this way."