A scowl passed over Cleghorn’s thin face set unswervingly towards the pots.  They glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence—­green, blue, carmine, strange purplish browns.  So the glittering coils of the serpent may have bewildered our first Mother.  There were other pots below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a batch as these.  And then his dazed eye for a second left the fascinating pots, and mechanically searched the vaulted chamber.  To his excited gaze the rubbish heaps centring about the curb seemed already in movement.  The massive bottom-stone overhung the parapet, resting only on loose dirt and shards.  With horror he noted that a breath might send it down.  If it slipped, whose were the lustred pots?  Against his will the phrase said itself over and over again throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he forgot everything in the vision of the lustred pots.

“Damn it, hurry up,” came thunderously from below.  Cleghorn stumbled with a curious hesitation between the crank and the poised bottom-stone.  The clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down; the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in uncertain oscillation.  Profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth of the well.

It was a tremulous Cleghorn that sent down the bucket and reeled up an irate and vociferous Webb.  Words abounded without explanations, and blows seemed possible, when Cleghorn, as it were apologetically raised a pitcher and a bowl into the shaft of light that came through the oubliette.  “They’re all like that, Dick,” he protested.  “It’s your lucky day.  I congratulate you.”  It was a silenced and mollified Webb that clutched at the pots, and noted wisely that every one had been brushed by the peacock’s tail.  With a kind of pity at last he turned to the deprecating Cleghorn and said, “That was an awkward business of yours about the shards, and the bottom-stone there is a pretty sight for a man who left it so and went down to work under it, but one couldn’t wait for such pots as these.  On my soul, Old Man, if you had dumped it all down on me I could hardly have blamed you.”

Welcomed with a loud laugh by its maker, the joke jarred on Cleghorn, who merely answered, “It’s very good of you, Dick, to say so.”

“But there may be quite as good ones below,” pursued Webb genially.  “We’ll rest up a bit and then you have your go and finish the job.”

“If you don’t mind, Dick, I’d rather not,” was the embarrassed answer.  “The fact is I’m too nervous and absentminded for this work.”  He looked down into the blackness with a shudder and said.  “No, I don’t want to go down there again.  One can’t tell what might happen there.”

“Then you’ve dropped your nerve.  Sorry for it,” came from a baffled and disgusted partner, but as he spoke a smile drew across the broad, amiable face, and he added insinuatingly, “Then the rest are mine, Old Man?”