Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/181

 seal of the box and lifted its polished lid. Oh no, it was not believable this time! For within lay jade and gems and gold and precious things—such a treasure as might exist in Arabian Nights tales, but not in any twentieth century place. Mark knelt, gazing, with Alan silent at his shoulder. "It is yours, Honorable Friend," Huen told them. "My grandfather smiles among our ancestors to-day."

"What can I say to him?" Mark asked of the wide-eyed student. "How can you tell him what I want to say, possibly?"

The student began a gabbled speech, but Huen stopped him with a quiet gesture of one long hand. He knew what Mark wanted to say, and he smiled kindly and calmly.

The boys could not really believe it, even when they had left the house of Huen, with the box—cloaked by a neat canvas cover—carried beside them by a coolie. Everything had been moving with the swift certainty of a dream; the actual recovery of the fortune had passed in so brief a moment after the weeks of waiting and wondering at sea.

"Such things don't happen," Alan