ten next morning to take him forward to his destination. Jacoby was a broad-built, resolute-looking man, with a thick sandy beard and ear-rings. He was travelling for a firm of Sheffield cutlers. "The two men had been dining together, and the meal was just over when I entered the room. Stilling at once entered into conversation with me, but the German only sat and looked at us. After I had finished my steak I joined them over cigars and a bottle of port. The evening was chilly, and we all drew up close to the fire. Stilling had evidently been drinking earlier in the day, and his voluble tongue had been made more voluble still by his potations. He did not fail to tell us who and what he was, and the object of his visit to Tewkesbury; in fact, he had the conversation pretty much to himself. I joined in occasionally, but Jacoby did little except smoke and turn his keen eyes from one to the other of us, interjecting now and then a gruff Nein or Ja when a point-blank question was put to him by the jeweller. "At length nothing would satisfy Stilling but showing us the wedding jewellery, on the beauty of which he descanted in glowing terms. So he ran upstairs as nimbly as a lamplighter, and presently came back, carrying a small, square leather case under his arm. This case, when unlocked, was found to contain a small box, made of polished oak, clamped with silver, and having the initials P. S. outlined on the lid with silver nails. The box was duly opened, and was found to be lined with purple velvet, and divided into compartments which were filled with jewels of various kinds. One after another Stilling lifted them tenderly out of their soft resting-place, in order that we might examine them. They flashed and scintillated in the gaslight, and threw out a thousand brilliant rays. Happening to turn my head, I could not help being struck with the change in Jacoby. He had put down his cigar in order that he might examine the jewels more closely, and was at that moment holding in his hairy, muscular hands a necklace of magnificent brilliants. But his hands were trembling as he held it, and his face had taken a yellow tinge, and his forehead had become clammy, and he was biting his under lip; and while I was looking, he flashed across at Stilling a look which said plainly enough: 'To make these mine I would kill you and a thousand like you!' That was how I read his look then; that is how I read it now. If ever there was murder in a man's eyes, there was in Jacoby's at that moment.