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Rh "Well, I'm—well, I'm jiggered!" exclaimed Keith. "Do you remember putting them there?" Chester asked.

"Not the ghost of a recollection," replied the sailor. "As I told you, though, I had a vague idea I'd put 'em somewhere safe."

"They were nearly too safe," the planter chuckled, taking the pearls in his fingers and polishing them lovingly with a handkerchief. "Now, who in the name of thunder would have thought of—I say, Keith, what sort of a place is Sydney for marketing pearls?"

"Pretty fair. I doubt whether there's a better outside the big cities in Europe or America."

"The saints be praised! These little things will make a rare difference in our position, because we can sell 'em and buy our goods for trading just where we please. We're going to do well, Keith. I'm not a superstitious blighter in the ordinary way, but I am in some things, and I'm willing to bet this is where my luck swings round again. God knows I've had a thin time lately, one way and another,—a regular landslide, as I was telling that chap Steel, off the gunboat. But even a landslide must come to an end sometime, and—"

"There goes the last of the candle," said Joan.

"By the way," said Chester, "it's a jolly good