would give anything, even to the half of his kingdom (if he were a
collector of the right sort), for a Precious Wentletrap.

[Illustration]

It was a Wentletrap on which the little red eyes of Mr. Endymion
Scraper were fixed at this moment. The morocco case in which it lay was
lined with crimson velvet, and the wonderful shell shone purely white
against the glowing colour,--snow upon ice; for the body of the shell
was semi-transparent, the denser substance of the spiral whorls turning
them to heavy snow against the shining clearness beneath them. Has any
of my readers seen a Precious Wentletrap? Then he knows one of the most
beautiful things that God has made.

Apparently the Skipper had just opened the case, for Mr. Scraper was
sitting with his mouth wide open, staring at it with greedy, almost
frightened eyes. Truly, a perfect specimen of this shell was, in those
days, a thing seen only in kings' cabinets; yet no flaw appeared in
this, no blot upon its perfect beauty. The old miser sat and stared, and
only his hands, which clutched the table-cloth in a convulsive grasp,
and his greedy eyes, showed that he was not turned to stone. He had been
amazed enough by the other treasures, as the Skipper had taken them one
by one from the iron safe in the corner, whose door now hung idly open.
Where had been seen such Pheasants as these,--the fragile, the
exquisite, the rarely perfect? Even the Australian Pheasant, rarest of
all, lay here before him, with its marvellous pencillings of rose and
carmine and gray. Mr. Endymion's mouth had watered at the mere
description of the shell in the catalogue, but he had never thought to
see one, except the imperfect specimen in the museum at Havenborough.
Here, too, was the Orange Cowry; here the Bishop's Mitre, and the