Part 37 (2/2)

New industry developed in the lower Mississippi, catching sturgeon-like fish for its roe.

_By permission of Dr. Louis Hussakoff._]

”I've got one,” he cried. ”I've got a big one!”

Every one present crowded round with cries of congratulation.

Slowly the newcomer opened his hand and revealed a large pearl almost twice the size of the gem Colin had been examining, and, therefore, if of equal purity, worth eight times as much. The finder handed it around, and in course of time it reached the boy, who scrutinized it carefully.

”Isn't it a beauty?” the newcomer cried. ”And just on the very last day!

I haven't a penny left in the world, and I sold my old farm to come up here. It's been getting harder and harder for me every day, and we had decided to give it all up. I hadn't a bit of hope left, and now----!”

The cottager whose pearl Colin had come down to inspect, slapped the farmer on the back, and without a trace of enviousness--for he himself had been lucky--joined in his delight. The farmer's wife had followed him more sedately, and she came in to share the general enthusiasm.

But Colin sat silent.

Over and over again, with a childish persistence, the farmer told how he had sold his farm, how he had come up with every penny he owned, how, little by little, it had all oozed away, and how in disgust he had decided to sell his boat, which would give him just enough money to get back to Missouri.

”But now, Mary,” he said, ”we can go back and get a better farm than we ever had, and we'll have a house in the village so that the children can go to a good school, and you'll have lots o' friends, and pretty things about you. It's been hard, neighbors, I tell you,” he said, looking round; ”but the luck has turned at last.”

Colin said not a word, but kept his eyes fixed on the table. His host, the mussel-gatherer, whose stone he had been examining, noticed this, but the newcomer was boisterous in his joy. He babbled of the wealth that was his, until if the stone had been a diamond of equal size, it would not have sufficed to have financed his dreams.

But the boy with the instruments on the table before him, said not a word of congratulation or delight. He had only seen the pearl for a moment, but he knew.

With hearty and jovial hospitality, the farmer invited every one in the room to come and stay with him as soon as he was settled down. He would show them, he said, what real life was like on a farm.

Suddenly he stopped.

”Mister!” he said, in an altered voice.

Colin, sitting alone, still beside his testing instruments, did not look up.

”Mister!” he said again.

In spite of himself the boy raised his eyes. Do what he might, he could not keep the sorrow out of them, and those of the finder of the pearl met his fairly.

The room was full of people but it grew still as death.

The woman clasped her husband's arm and gave a low moan. He touched her shoulder gently.

”Mister,” he said again, with a humbleness that seemed strangely gentle after all his bl.u.s.ter and brag, ”will you look at this and tell me what you think it's worth?”

”I'm not an expert,” the boy said hastily. ”I couldn't judge its value.

You ought to take it to some one that knows all about these things.”

”I can see what you think,” the farmer said with a pitiful, sad smile; ”you think it isn't worth much. Is it worth anything at all?”

Colin took the discolored pearl and looked at it closely. He put it on the scales and weighed it carefully, measured it, and scrutinized it as closely as he could in the lamplight, but he knew himself that these were devices to gain time. The pearl showed all too clearly a flaw that would make it valueless. Every one waited for his verdict. He was conscious that his voice was a little shaky, but he answered as steadily as he could:

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