"Notes or gold?" Mr. Fossel picked the specimen up, and rubbed it gently with his sleeve. "Now, that's a queer thing, eh? My brother-in-law sent it to me last week, and I've been using it for a paper-weight, not being a scientific man. But just you look into it. He tells me there are hundreds lying about where he lives--Ogwell, the place is, in Devonshire, just behind Newton Abbot--and that they're called madrepores. He's a humorous fellow, too, is my brother-in-law. You see the joke, of course?" "I can't say that I do, exactly," the Commandant confessed. "Good gracious! Fossil--Fossell: this is a fossil, you see, and I'm called Fossell: and so he sends it to me. He has made a good deal of fun out of my name before now, in his humorous way. Not that I mind, of course." "I dare say not. Did you say that the papers were all right?" "The papers?... Yes, of course, the papers are all right. Will you take it in notes or gold?" "In gold, if you please." The Commandant caught at the edge of the counter, while his heart leapt, and the bank premises seemed to whirl around him. "Fifteen-eighteen-six ... be so good as to verify it, if you please," said Mr. Fossell, counting out the coins--the blessed coins! "But I want you just to take a look into the thing. Looks like a piece of coral, eh? See the delicate lines of it? And my brother-in-law tells me it was once alive--a kind of fish--and got itself embedded in this piece of limestone because it was too lazy to move. A lesson in that"--Mr. Fossell wagged his head sagely--"if we choose to take it! To be sure, it happened thousands of years ago; but there it is--and here are we. For my part, I don't look at things humorously like my brother-in-law. I like to find a serious moral where I can." The Commandant counted the coins and dropped them into his pocket. Their weight seemed to make a man of him again. He bent and affected to examine the madrepore. Mr. Fossell bent also. He was on the point of asking--in a low voice, that the clerk might not overhear--for an explanation of Miss Gabriel's gossip. But at this juncture a client entered, and the Commandant escaped. He went up the hill with a new centre of gravity: so different is a load in the pocket from a load on the heart. CHAPTER XX THE GUITAR AND THE CASEMENT "A parcel for you, sir!" Sergeant Archelaus had spied the Commandant coming up the hill, and met him on the barrack doorstep with the news. "A parcel?" The Commandant had walked straight from the bank to Mr. Tregaskis' shop, and there paid his account; but he had made no purchases. "There must be some mistake, Archelaus; I have ordered nothing in the town." "From the mainland, sir." "God bless my soul!" "Yes, sir, and marked 'Fragile'; a good-sized box, but uncommon light to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I've carried it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy."