that is?" He handed it to me.

Now, a year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in taking a
London science degree, so that I have a smattering of physics and
mineralogy. The thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the
darker sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the top
of my thumb. I took it, and saw it had the form of a regular
octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of
minerals. I took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly.
Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on my
watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest
ease.

I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "It
certainly is rather like a diamond. But, if so, it is a Behemoth
of diamonds. Where did you get it?"

"I tell you I made it," he said. "Give it back to me."

He replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. "I will sell
it you for one hundred pounds," he suddenly whispered eagerly.
With that my suspicions returned. The thing might, after all, be
merely a lump of that almost equally hard substance, corundum, with
an accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond. Or if it was a
diamond, how came he by it, and why should he offer it at a hundred
pounds?

We looked into one another's eyes. He seemed eager, but
honestly eager. At that moment I believed it was a diamond he was
trying to sell. Yet I am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave