THE RUBY OF KISHMOOR
would, doubtless, have been an honest man had he not been led astray by the villain Hunt, who so nearly compassed your own destruction. He returned to this island before his death, and made me the sole heir of all that great fortune which he had gathered—perhaps not by the most honest means—in the waters of the Indian Ocean. But the greatest treasure of all that fortune bequeathed to me was a single jewel which you yourself have just now defended with a courage and a fidelity that I cannot sufficiently extol. It is that priceless gem known as the Ruby of Kishmoor. I will show it to you.”
Hereupon she took the little ivory ball in her hand, and, with a turn of her beautiful wrists, unscrewed a lid so nicely and cunningly adjusted that no eye could have detected where it was joined to the parent globe. Within was a fleece of raw silk containing an object which she presently displayed before the astonished gaze of our hero. It was a red stone of about the bigness of a plover’s egg, and which glowed and
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