I was chopping wood in a leisurely way, and enjoying the exercise. The little girls were inside the hut at the moment, after playing about most of the morning. Agathemer came out of the store-house, glanced around, and beckoned to me: together we went inside. There he showed me where he, led by a very slight difference of color, had dug into the earth floor and come upon a small maple-wood chest, like a temple treasure-box. It was, outside, perhaps a foot wide and about as high, and not over a foot and a half long. He had forced it open with the hatchet and a heavy knife, like a Spartan wood-knife. The wood of the chest was so thick that the inside cavity was comparatively small. But it was big enough to have held, say, two quarts of wine. And it was almost full of jewels; opals, turquoises, topazes, amethysts, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Agathemer shut the store-house door and fastened it so the little girls could not open it if they should chance to try. Then he spread his cloak on the earth floor and dumped the contents of the chest on it. Most of the gems were small, at least two score were very large, and there were many, of notable, though moderate, size. We could see them fairly well, though the store-house was dim, since, with the door shut, the only light was what came through chinks. We ran our fingers through the heap of jewels, picked up the largest and held them to the light and gained a general idea of the value of the hoard. We put them all back into the chest, shut it, and reburied it. It showed no marks of Agathemer's dexterous attempts at opening it, for the lid was held down only by a clasp outside, and by the swelling of the inside flange of wood against the overlapping rim of the lid. We went out to the woodpile and I resumed my chopping, while Agathemer set to riving logs with the wedges and maul. We had always kept the little girls away from the woodpile and so were sure of being alone. Also we talked Greek as an extra precaution. Agathemer, resting between assaults on a very big log, said: