Was ever mockery more
fiendish? As the full cruelty of the words broke in upon me, once
again I seemed to hear the awful cry from the sea, but now among its
voices rang a fearful laugh as though Amos Trenoweth's soul were
making merry in hell over his grim jest--the slaughter of his son and
his son's wife.
White with desperate passion, I turned and hurled the accursed key
across the room into the blazing hearth.
END OF BOOK I.
BOOK II.
THE FINDING OF THE GREAT RUBY.
CHAPTER I.
TELLS HOW THOMAS LOVEDAY AND I WENT IN SEARCH OF FORTUNE.
Seeing that these pages do not profess to be an autobiography, but
rather the plain chronicle of certain events connected with the Great
Ruby of Ceylon, I conceive myself entitled to the reader's pardon if
I do some violence to the art of the narrator, and here ask leave to
pass by, with but slight allusion, some fourteen years. This I do
because the influence of this mysterious jewel, although it has
indelibly coloured my life, has been sensibly exercised during two
periods alone--periods short in themselves, but nevertheless long
enough to determine between them every current of my destiny, and to
supply an interpretation for my every action.
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