was growing alarmed.

"Do what I say," she said sternly, and he found himself holding the
relic.

"Now, young Monsieur, look me in the eyes a little and listen. I
request of you that holding that black, engraved stone in your hand,
you will be so good as to throw your soul, do you understand, your
soul, back, back, /back/ and tell us where it come from, who have it,
what part it play in their life, and everything about it."

"How am I to know?" asked Godfrey, with indignation.

Then suddenly everything before him faded, and he saw himself standing
in a desert by a lump of black rock, at which a brown man clad only in
a waist cloth and a kind of peaked straw hat, was striking with an
instrument that seemed to be half chisel and half hammer, fashioned
apparently from bronze, or perhaps of greenish-coloured flint.
Presently the brown man, who had a squint in one eye and a hurt toe
that was bound round with something, picked up a piece of the black
rock that he had knocked off, and surveyed it with evident
satisfaction. Then the scene vanished.

Godfrey told it with interest to the audience who were apparently also
interested.

"The finding of the stone," said Madame. "Continue, young Monsieur."

Another vision rose before Godfrey's mind. He beheld a low room having
a kind of verandah, roofed with reeds, and beyond it a little