One day I was strolling down the garden among the winding paths, when I came suddenly upon Father Payne, who was hurrying towards the house. He had in each of his hands a large roughly spherical stone, and looked at me a little shamefacedly. "You look, Father," I said, "as if you were going to stone Stephen." He laughed, and looked at the stones. "Yes," he said, "they are what the Greeks called 'hand-fillers,' for use in battle--but I have no nefarious designs." "What are you going to do with them?" I said "That's a secret!" he said, and made as if he were going in. Then he said, "Come, you shall hear it--you shall share my secret, and be a partner in my dreams, as the fisherman says in Theocritus." But he did not tell me what he was going to do, and seemed half shy of doing so. "It's like Dr. Johnson and the orange-peel," I said. "'Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further.'" "Well, the truth is," he said at last, "that I'm a perfect baby. I never can resist looking into a hole in the ground, and I happened to look into the pit where we dig gravel. I can't tell you how long I spent there." "What were you doing?" I said. "Looking for fossils," he said; "I had a great gift for finding them when I was a child. I didn't find any fossils to-day, but I found these stones, and I think they contain crystals. I am going to break them and see." I took one in my hand. "I think they are only fossil sponges," I said; "there will only be a rusty sort of core inside." "You know that!" he said, brightening up; "you know about stones too? But these are not sponges--they would rattle if they were--no, they contain crystals--I am sure of it. Come and see!" We went into the stable-yard. Father Payne fetched a hammer, and then selected a convenient place in the cobbled yard to break the stones. He put one of them in position, and aimed a blow at it, but it glanced off, and the stone flew off with the impact to some distance. "Lie still, can't you?" said Father Payne, apostrophising the stone, and adding, "This is for my pleasure, not for yours." I recovered the stone, and brought it back, and Father Payne broke it with a well-directed blow. He gathered up the pieces eagerly. "Yes," he said, "it's all right--they are blue crystals: better than I had hoped." He handed a fragment to me to look at. The inside of the stone was hollow. It had a coagulated appearance, and was thickly coated with minute bluish crystals, very beautiful.