The girl being left alone, fastened both doors of her room, hung napkins over the key-holes, drew close the scarlet curtains of her windows, and then sat down on the floor and opened the bag and turned out its contents on the carpet.

Fortunatus! what a sight!  Well might her fellow-passenger have heard a crash when the bag slipped from her lap to the bottom of the car!

About twelve little canvas bags filled with coins, and marked variously on the sides—­L50, L100, L500, L1,000.

She gazed at the treasure in a sort of rapture of possession!  How fast her heart beat!  She did not think that there was so much money in the whole world!  She began to count the bags, and add up their marked figures, to try to estimate the amount.  There were two bags marked one thousand, four marked five hundred, three marked one hundred, and three marked fifty pounds—­in all twelve little canvas bags containing altogether four thousand four hundred and fifty pounds.

What a mine of wealth!  How she gloated over it!  She longed to cut open the little canvas bags and spread the whole glittering mass of gold and silver on the carpet before her, that she might gaze upon it—­not as a miser to hoard it, but as a vain beauty to spend it.  How many bonnets and dresses and shawls and laces and jewels this money would buy?  How she longed to lay it out!  But she dared not do it yet.  She dared not even open the canvas bags.  She must conceal her riches.

She began to put the bags back in the satchel.

In doing so, she perceived that she had not half emptied it—­there was something in each of the buttoned pockets on the inside.  She opened the pockets and turned out their contents.

Rainbows and sunbeams and flashes of lightning!

Her eyes were dazzled with splendor.  There was set in a ring a large solitaire diamond in which seemed collected all the light and color of the sun!  There was a watch in a gold hunting case, thickly studded with precious stones, and bearing in the center of its circle the initials of the late owner, set in diamonds, and which was suspended to a heavy gold chain.  There was a snuff-box of solid gold encrusted with pearls, opals, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, amethysts and sapphires, in a design of Oriental beauty and splendor.

There were also diamond studs and diamond sleeve-buttons—­each a large solitaire of immense value, and there were other jewels in the form of seals, lockets, and so forth; and all those delighted her woman’s eyes and heart.  But, above all, the golden box, set with all sorts of flaming precious stones, with its splendid colors and blazing fires dazzled her sight and dazed her mind.

“I will keep this for mysel’,” she said, as she put it in the bosom of her dress—­“I will, I will, I WILL!  He shall na hae this again.  I’ll tell him it was lost or sto’en.”

Then she opened the satchel and began to put away the other jewels, until she took up the watch, looked at it longingly, put it in the bag, took it out again, and finally, without a word, slipped it into her bosom beside the box.