shoulder. Still it encountered nothing but
empty space. I enlarged the hole till I could
get my head in, which I raised very cautiously
indeed, and stared about; but all was vacancy
and darkness. I hoisted a light at the end of
a stick, and lifted it at least five feet above
the aperture; but it only displayed a sort of
upright stone vault. Finally, I made the
aperture larger, and by means of a short
ladder I ascended. Was I in an upright
sarcophagus? or was I in the antechamber
and waiting-room of the Koh-i-noor? Was
I not?—yes, I was—it must be so. I had
made a mistake in a figure—I had got into
the great Spanish Wine Jar. It was not so
bad a calculation, after all. The Diamond
was not many yards distant.

It was a curious position to have gained.
I saw at once that it might be used as an
auxiliary to my design. If I could bore an
extremely fine hole or two through the sides
of the Jar, so as to peep through while the
holes remained imperceptible, because so
utterly beyond suspicion, I might derive a
fund of useful knowledge.

With this intention, and indeed with this
discovery of my "whereabout," I was of
course resolved not to acquaint Bob. I
merely told him that we had come upon
strange ground, and that it might be dangerous
for him to explore the bad atmosphere
of this aperture with me, as he was not a
chemist; he must, therefore, on no account
ascend, for fear of gases, which were valuable
to our Gas Company, but might be deadly to
him,

I succeeded in drilling five minute holes
in the Wine Jar, beginning with the srze
of pin-holes, and ending by enlarging them
to something more than the size of pins'
heads, though a slip of the hand with one of
them made it almost as large as a pea. This
was effected in the night; and when I
ascended next morning into the Jar, and saw
the light from the interior of the Crystal
Palace shine through into the interior of my
place of concealment, I sank back against
the opposite side, and almost fainted away.
Oh, if I had overturned the Jar! Recovering
myself, however, by a powerful
effort of will, I peered and speculated for
some time through this hole, till at length I
fairly made out the exact position of my
works under-ground, with reference to the
Koh-i-noor. They were not very wide of the
mark, considering all things. Renewing my
labours with increased ardour, I soon brought
my tunnel-end right under Mr. Chubb's iron
safe. Here I at once made an enlargement,
as a chamber for final operations. I was in
such a state of ecstacy, that I embraced Bob
Styles with both arms, much to the lout's
wonderment; and that same day, after our
work was done for the night, I invited him
to a good supper with me of several delicacies
I had procured, and gave him as much wine
to drink as he liked, and beer too, of both of
which he drank like a dolphin. I had great
trouble to get him. to bed. The brute
almost frightened me to death by wanting to
sing a song at two in the morning; and he so
far forgot himself as to challenge me to fight
him "for a fi-pun no'!" He was totally
unfit for work all next day.

Not so myself. I alone, with bended back,
and shovel, lamp, and barrows, tunnelled
beneath the Prodigy, and marked it for my
hook. Ah! if I could but touch it with the
instrument I had made for the last effort,—viz.,
a long handle of steel, furnished at the other
end with a compound action of hook and
forceps—people might talk of the Koh-i-noor
vanishing, but it would surely vanish into my
custody. What were my turquoise and my
cairngorm to this?—mere nothings—absolute
nothings. I had had a small jollification on
the strength of arriving beneath the earth
that sustained my Prize; but what would
that be to the festive scenes I would have—
the classic and romantic "games" I would
institute among a select circle of friends?
I should tell them I had been excessively
lucky at the Derby. Yes—the day—my Derby
day—was at hand.

Alone in the gloomy little cavern at the
end of my works, I sat upon the largest of my
zinc barrows, looking upward at the excavated
earthy roof that frowned close above
me, on which my lamp cast its sullen gleam,
and a thought came across me of the innocent
days of childhood, when, upon a certain
occasion, I had played at hide and seek in one
of the master's cellars, and sat alone,
trembling with nervousness, among the damp
beer casks, with their mouldy, mildewed
sides, and rusty oozing hoops. Ah, how
different were my tremblings now!

What took place on this eventful night—
this night marked with a finger of dazzling
fire on my life's horoscope—I cannot pretend
in any measured form of regular sequence to
relate. I was in such a state of preternatural
elevation, that I really consider it as a delirium.
How I first got up into the Wine
Jar, and listened at the round hole, holding
my breath—then descended with clasped
hands—how I bored my way up beneath
Chubb's iron safe, till I felt the cold iron—
how I drilled a small hole in the lower iron
plate, into which I inserted my instruments,
and gradually cut an aperture big enough to
enable me to thrust half my face in—how I
stuck up a lighted taper inside—how, as I was
raising myself to insert half my face and Iook
up and about, (feeling that the moment was
now at hand,) half another face was
protruded through the aperture, and looked down
and about! I thought I should have died on
the spot. I wonder I did not. Of course, the
horrible appearance must have been a delusion
of the senses—the senses acted upon by my
conscience. I looked again, and it was gone.
It came no more. I took a dram of brandy.
I felt sure that my nervous imagination had