"Yes," I shouted back, "I have found the treasure; you can pull me up." The words were scarcely out of my mouth before the bucket began to move, and I went up a great deal faster than I had gone down. Yet in that short journey other thoughts came to my mind, and I heard Grace's voice again, sweet and grave, "Have a care, have a care how you touch the treasure; it was evilly come by, and will bring a curse with it." At the same time I remembered how I had been led to the discovery of this jewel - first, by Mr Glennie's stories, second, by my finding the locket, and third, by Ratsey giving me the hint that the writing was a cipher, and so had come to the hiding-place without a swerve or stumble; and it seemed to me that I could not have reached it so straight without leading hand, but whether good or evil, who should say?

As I neared the top I heard the turnkey urging the donkey to trot faster in the wheel, so that the bucket might rise the quicker, but just before my head was level with the ground he set the break on and fixed me where I was. I was glad to see the light again, and Elzevir's face looking kindly on me, but vexed to be brought up thus suddenly just when I was expecting to set foot on terra firma.

The turnkey had stopped me through his covetous eagerness, so that he might get sooner at the jewel, and now he craned over the low parapet and reached out his hand to me, crying - "Where is the treasure? where is the treasure? give me the treasure!"

I held the diamond between finger and thumb of my right hand, and waved it for Elzevir to see. By stretching out my arm I could have placed it in the turnkey's hand, and was just going to do so, when I caught his eyes for the second time that day, and something in them made me stop. There was a look in his ace that brought back to me the memory of an autumn evening, when I sat in my aunt's parlour reading the book called the Arabian Nights; and how, in the story of the Wonderful Lump, Aladdin's wicked uncle stands at the top of the stairs when the boy is coming up out of the underground cavern, and will not let him out, unless he first gives up the treasure. But Aladdin refused to give up his lamp until he should stand safe on the ground again, because he guessed that if he did, his uncle would shut him up in the cavern and leave him to die there; and the look in the turnkey's eyes made me refuse to hand him the jewel till I was safe out of the well, for a horrible fear seized me that, as soon as he had taken it from me, he meant to let me fall down and drown below.

So when he reached down his hand and said, "Give me the treasure," I answered, "Pull me up then; I cannot show it you in the bucket."

"Nay, fad," he said, cozening me, "'tis safer to give it me now, and have both hands free to help you getting out; these stones are wet and greasy, and you may chance to slip, and having no hand to save you, fall back in the well."

But I was not to be cheated, and said again sturdily, "No, you must pull me up first."

Then he took to scowling, and cried in an angry tone, "Give me the treasure, I say, or it will be the worse for you"; but Elzevir would not let him speak to me that way, and broke in roughly, "Let the boy up, he is sure-footed and will not slip. 'Tis his treasure, and he shall do with it as he likes: only that thou shalt have a third of it when we have sold it."

Then he: "'Tis not his treasure - no, nor yours either, but mine, for it is in my well, and I have let you get it. Yet I will give you a half-share in it; but as for this boy, what has he to do with it? We will give him a golden guinea, and he will be richly paid for his pains."

"Tush," cries Elzevir, "let us have no more fooling; this boy shall have his share, or I will know the reason why."

"Ay, you shall know the reason, fair enough," answers the turnkey, "and 'tis because your name is Block, and there is a price of #50 upon your head, and #20 upon this boy's. You thought to outwit me, and are yourself outwitted; and here I have you in a trap, and neither leaves this room, except with hands tied, and bound for the gallows, unless I first have the jewel safe in my purse."