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Rh As he spoke, he had thrust his hand into his pocket. He brought it out now and displayed upon the palm a glistening, sparkling, flaming green stone—so large that his fingers, when closed, could not entirely conceal it, while it shot out its scintillating green fire—the great green stone of Java, the hereditary royal stone of Surakarta! But Max, now that he had freed himself of responsibility for it seemed to look at it with no other sort of interest than he would have shown toward one of his dried sea-urchins or an impaled beetle.

"You will see,"—he unnecessarily directed their attention to it—"that, as the man once told me, it has indeed a flaw in it—very shmall, it iss true, but opservable as I hold it to the light. That iss so with almost all these great stones."