“Only the other day eight were found at one digging, not far from Toledo. They had been lost for a thousand years. There was a find for 22you. Then the crown of the Emperor of Austria, the holy crown, the szenta korona, has been lost and found no less than three times. The last time (not half a century ago) it disappeared after the defeat of Kossuth. Some said it had been taken to London; some, that it was broken up and the jewels sold in Constantinople. But for a few florins a peasant returned it as mysteriously as it had disappeared. Foolish peasant!”

22

szenta korona

“Mr. St. Hilary,” expostulated Mrs. Gordon severely, “you would not have had him do otherwise?”

“I suppose not. But upon my word, sometimes I think that one might as well go in for big things as for little. There is the Gnaga Boh, the Dragon Lord, the most perfect ruby in the world. A half-witted creature, the widow of King Theebaw, wears it. We are great friends, that old hag and I, and I could have stolen it from her a thousand times. Some day perhaps she will give it to me. And that notorious Indian prince, Gwaikor of Baroda, has half a dozen stones of price. He, too, is a crony of mine. Nothing would be easier than to steal one of them.”

“My dear Mr. St. Hilary,” again interrupted Mrs. Gordon, “surely you do not contemplate burglary?”

23“That is precisely the trouble,” he complained mournfully, “I have a conscience. But findings are certainly keepings.”

23

“Ah, but it must be so difficult to find one’s findings,” said Jacqueline quaintly.

“Not always. Have you never heard how the Hermes of Praxiteles was discovered?”

She shook her head.

“Pausanias, an old Greek historian, wrote of that statue about a thousand years ago–how he had seen it at Olympia. There was the passage for all the world to read. He wrote precisely what there was to dig for–precisely where one was to dig. But did any one believe him? Not for a thousand years. But when, after a thousand years, a party of Germans made up their minds that perhaps there was something in the story, and dug in Olympia as he told them, there was their Hermes waiting for them. You see one may have information as to where lies one’s treasure sometimes. But so few of us have faith.”

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