"A stone," answered Olox, and there was suspicion in his manner in spite of my attempt to avert it. "You already know of the Bolla. Your friend requested his majesty to have it brought out, and at that time you said that you had heard of it in the other kingdom."
"So we did," I replied, trimming my sails to another breeze, "but what is it? Our information is rather vague."
"A stone, as I just said," went on Olox. "It has a beneficial moral and physical effect on whoever touches it."
"Where did it come from?"
"It has been in Njambai for ages," was the indefinite answer.
"How did King Gaddbai get hold of it?"
"He borrowed it from the king of Baigol."
"And yet you call it one of his treasures! If it was borrowed, Olox, how could it possibly belong here?"
"King Gaddbai has taken it," was the calm response. "What he wants he makes his own. If King Golbai had not loaned the stone, there would have been a war."
"Was that the right thing for your king to do?" inquired the professor.