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children. Sally found an empty compartment without difficulty.
    She waited until the train was out of the station before she opened the parcel. The knots were carefully buried in sealing wax, and she broke a fingernail trying to scrape it away.
    Finally she had it open and discovered a book.
    It looked like a diary of some sort. It was quite thick, and the pages were covered in close writing. It had been roughly bound in gray cardboard, but the stitching was loose, and one whole section fell out in her hand. She replaced it carefully and began to read.
    The first page bore this inscription: A Narrative of the Events in Lucknow and Agrapur, India^ i S^d-y; with an account of the disappearance of the Ruby of Agrapur^ and the part played by the child known as Sally Lockhart.
    She stopped and read it again. Herself! And a ruby—
    A hundred questions rose suddenly like flies disturbed

    at a feast, and filled her head with confusion. She closed her eyes and waited for calm, then opened them and read on.
    In 1856, I, George Arthur Marchbanks, was serving with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, the Thirty-second Foot, at Agrapur in the province of Oudh. Some months before the outbreak of the mutiny, I had occasion to visit the Maharajah of Agrapur in company with three of my brother officers, namely Colonel Brandon, Major Park, and Captain Lockhart.
    The visit was ostensibly a private one for the purpose of sport. In fact, however, our main purpose was to conduct certain secret political discussions with the maharajah. The content of these discussions need not concern this account, except insofar as they contributed to the suspicion in which the maharajah was held by one faction of his subjects—a suspicion which led, as I shall show, to his fate during the terrible events of the following year.
    On the second evening of our visit to Agrapur, the maharajah gave a banquet in our honor. Whether or not it was his intention to impress us with his wealth, that was certainly the effect; for I had never set eyes upon so prodigal a display of splendor as that which met us that evening.
    The banquet room was set about with pillars of marble exquisitely carved, and bearing at their capitals representations of the lotus flower, lavishly covered in gold leaf. The floor we trod on was set with lapis lazuli and onyx; a fountain in the comer tinkled with rose-scented water, and the ma-harajah's court musicians played their strange, languid melodies behind a screen of inlaid mahogany. The dishes were of solid gold; but the centerpiece of the display was the ruby, of incomparable size and luster, which gleamed at the mahara-jah's breast.

    This was the famous Ruby of Agrapur, about which I had heard a good deal. I could not help gazing at it—I confess that something in its depth and beauty, in the blood-red liquid fire that seemed to fill it, fascinated me and held my attention, so that I stared more than was strictly polite; in any event, the maharajah noticed my curiosity and told us the story of the stone.
    It had been discovered in Burma six centuries before, and been given in tribute to Balban, King of Delhi, from whom it had descended to the princely house of Agrapur. Throughout the centuries it had been lost, stolen, sold, given in ransom countless times, and had always returned to" its royal owners. It had been responsible for deaths too many to list— murders, suicides, executions—and once it had been the cause of a war in which the population of an entire province had been put to the sword. Less than fifty years before, it had been stolen by a French adventurer. He, poor wretch, thought to escape detection by swallowing it, but in vain: he was torn open while still alive, and the stone plucked warm from his belly.
    The maharajah's eyes met mine as he recounted these tales.
    "Would you care to examine it, Major.^" he asked. "Hold it close to the light and look inside. But take care that you do not fall!"
    He handed it to me, and I