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"Yes " he said, "we have been paid." Then he added, in explanation of his act. "These rubies have no equal in the world and the gold-work attaching them together is extremely old. I am always curious to admire it." He looked down at the girl, at the necklace, at the space about them, as though he were deeply, profoundly puzzled. "We had a fear," he said, " it was wrong!"
Exteriorly the building presented an equally ornate appearance, glass, gold-work, and ornamental hangings quite concealing the carpentry, so that "every quarter of it, even the least, was a habitation fit for a prince."
I had some knowledge of gold-work, but was far less skilful than the thief had been. He had replaced the setting so exactly that I defy anyone to see the difference. My work was rude and clumsy. However, I hoped that the plate might not be carefully examined, or the roughness of the setting observed, until my task was done. Next night I replaced four more stones.
The approach to this place is as solitary now as it was thronged and bustling on the evenings of the festival; and in broad daylight one is surprised at the deathlike decay of the sacred surroundings which at night had seemed so full of life. Not a creature to be seen on the time-worn granite steps; not a creature beneath the vast, sumptuous porticoes; the colors, the gold-work are dim with dust.
The singers of his court found in him a brother singer, gathering the old songs of his people to teach them to his children, breaking his renderings from the Latin with simple verse, solacing himself in hours of depression with the music of the Psalms. He passed from court and study to plan buildings and instruct craftsmen in gold-work, to teach even falconers and dog-keepers their business.
"And to think that you have entered the army again!" she said, drawing a caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve. "I did it to please you," he declared. The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost impossible. "I do not believe it all," Aurora said. "It is a dream I have been conjuring up." She withdrew from him. "Stay here, vision of a soldier. Do not stir.
Hola! ma cherie, I wish to leave with you my gold-work, my velvet, my silk, my feather bed, my incense-boat, my ewer, my naping linen, and all the rest of it. I take only the money in a linen bag, and the box of rose colored sugar which is a gift from my captain to the Lady Loring. Wilt guard my treasure for me?" "It shall be put in the safest loft, good archer.
At the beginning of that long epoch of settled life the art of working gold was developed and perfected; and we have abundance of beautiful gold-work from remote times, of such fine design and execution that there is nothing in the world to equal it.
For aught I could make out, they did not come to hear, but to be heard; the ladies chattering and ogling; the gallants stalking from box to box and pit to gallery, waving their scented handkerchiefs, striking a pose where the greater part of the audience could see the flash of beringed fingers, or taking a pinch of snuff with a snap of the lid to call attention to its gold-work and naked goddesses.
The runes spread as far as the Orkneys, and there they were well within the horizon of Ireland's knowledge. Nothing would be more natural than the keeping of written records in Erin for three or four hundred years before Cuculain's birth, nineteen hundred years ago. The arts of life were very perfect; the gold-work of that time is unsurpassed has never been surpassed.
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