Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/218

208 and began fumbling in the loose earth with his fingers.

More crystals! We looked on in speechless astonishment The cavity into which his spade had broken was some two feet deep. The bottom was filled with sand, and loose in this sand, as if they had been packed in it for safe keeping, lay many crystals of the finest colors we had yet seen. Their shapes were not perfect, and many of them were cracked or fissured as if they had been at some time exposed to the grinding of other stones upon them, but the colors were superb. Carefully we sifted the cavity to the very bottom, not leaving a single fragment of the gems in it. By this time the sun was well down in the western sky.

"We really must go home, boys," said the Doctor; "they will be anxious about us, and I am hungry; and you ought to be, though you are not," he added, scanning our excited faces with a professional eye. Hungry!—we had no more thought of hunger than we should have in Aladdin's palace. Our eyes were so feasted that the whole body seemed fed. It was simply impossible to carry down the ledge all the crystals and crystal-bearing fragments of rock we had collected. We hid some of the least beautiful specimens under the old tree-root, and we were then so heavily burdened that the walk home was a serious toil. Ally was at the window watching for us. At the first sight of our overloaded