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The odd thing is that the visitors are handling them and turning them over, and examining them quite freely, while the owner, a wizened old man in horn spectacles, hardly watches! "They're not real?" Indeed they are! Rubies, star-sapphires, opals, and many another precious stone. That native owner has a queer faith in the honesty of his customers! Long may it last!

Of other jewels she'd have none. "But thou must have a shoulder knot," said Cedric, and he took from the casket a glittering shoulder brooch of opals and clasped it in the satin of her frock, and drew from a tripod of white and gold a flaming jacqueminot and gave it into her hand and led her forth, followed closely by Janet.

Anon, electric-lighting and other modern conveniences are added, thereby making life more tolerable in a fierce climate of heat and cold, of fiercer winds and blinding dust. Not only is gold found in these desert wastes, but borax, nitre, sulphur, silver, salt, soda, opals, garnets, turquoises, onyx, and marble form a part of its resources.

It was near sundown, and far across the earth's floor, which looked somewhat like a wonderful mosaic of opals and jade at this hour, a Mexican goatherd was driving his flock. That was the only sign of life to be seen or felt, if you except the noise of locusts in the mesquite near by and the spasmodic progress of a horned toad in the sand outside Sylvia's gate.

"So," he said, slowly, with a sad smile, "your mother's talisman was worth more than mine. I have kept the lake pebbles she gave me, and death has passed me by; but the opals of the agraffe did not bring happiness to your mother. It is said that those stones are unlucky. Are you superstitious?"

Thar's a broke-down sport this yere's long ago while I'm briefly sojournin' in Socorro who's got a opal, an' he one day puts it in hock with a kyard sharp for a small stake. The kyard gent says he ain't alarmed none by these charges made of opals bein' bad luck. It's a ring, an' he sticks it on his little finger. Two days later he goes broke ag'in four jacks.

Rock-crystals, which you know probably under the name of Irish diamonds, are crystallized quartz; and so, with slightly different colourings, are agates, opals, jasper, onyx, cairngorms, and many other precious stones.

He held up a little circle of discolored but lusterful pearls let it fall again, since it was worth only a glance. He leaned on the counter, indifferent to urge where value seemed so slight. He seemed amused at Flora's enthusiasm for clouded opals. "They look well enough among this junk," he said, "but compare them with your own rings and you'll see the difference." She heard him dreamily.

Andras slowly detached from his shoulder the silver agraffe, set with opals, which clasped his fur pelisse, and handed it to the gypsy, who regarded it with admiring eyes as it flashed in the red light. "The day when my father is avenged," he said, "and our Hungary is free, bring me this jewel, and you and yours come to the castle of the Zilahs.

The gold was stored in coffers of elephant-hide, and the gold-dust in leather bottles. There were opals and sapphires, the former in cups of crystal, and the latter in cups of jade. Round green emeralds were ranged in order upon thin plates of ivory, and in one corner were silk bags filled, some with turquoise-stones, and others with beryls.