globe of blue fire, a fire that emitted rainbows instead of sparks.

He passed it from hand to hand. It seemed a miracle that the fingers
which touched it did not burst into flame. For a moment the five men
might have been five children.

"Well," said Pete Murphy, "according to all fiction precedent, the rest
of us ought to get together immediately, if not a little sooner, and
murder you, Honey."

"Go as far as you like," said Honey, dropping the stone into the pocket
of his flannel shirt. "Only if anybody really gets peeved about this
junk of carbon, I'll give it to him."

For a while life flowed wonderful. The men labored with a joy-in-work at
which they themselves marveled. Their out-of-doors existence showed its
effects in a condition of glowing health. Honey Smith changed first to a
brilliant red, then to a uniform coffee brown, and last to a shining
bronze which was the mixture of both these colors. Pete Murphy grew one
crop of freckles, then another and still another until Honey offered to
"excavate" his features. Ralph Addington developed a rich, subcutaneous,
golden-umber glow which made him seem, in connection with an occasional
unconventionality of costume, more than ever like the schoolgirl's idea
of an artist. Billy Fairfax's blond hair bleached to flaxen. His
complexion deepened in tone to a permanent pink. This, in contrast with
the deep clear blue of his eyes, gave him a kind of out-of-doors
comeliness. But Frank Merrill was the surprise of them all. He not only
grew handsomer, he grew younger; a magnificent, towering, copper-colored
monolith of a man, whose gray eyes were as clear as mountain springs,
whose white teeth turned his smile to a flash of light. Constantly they