The creak of the potter’s workshop door was followed by his step, and the next moment he entered the room and advanced toward them. They looked at him in astonishment, for a wonderful change was in his aspect. He was clearly in a state of great mental excitement, not to speak of evident delight. The soot of the furnace on this occasion rather overspread and subdued the reddish incrustation of clay on his person, and in his hand he carried a globular vessel of dull, coarse‐looking glass. He held it up before him as he entered, in such an eager manner, as to draw their attention to it at once, without a word from his lips. His deep‐set eyes sparkled in the firelight with infinite vivacity, as they flung their flashing glances first from one to the other, and then to the cup in his hand, and back again. His eager hurried step brought him up to the Suburan and the maiden almost at a run, and then he stopped short, with the vessel uplifted in one hand, and the forefinger of the other pointing to it. A strange laugh, or chuckle of supreme joy or exultation, escaped him, and he moved the article, with its accompanying index finger, first before the face of Neæra and then of Cestus. They arose silently from their seats and stared at the potter with strange wonder, and something of alarm, at this unusual proceeding on the part of a man of habitual reserve and serenity. It was a spectacle almost as little to be expected, as for a statue of the grave goddess and her owl to step down from its plinth and cut a caper on a temple floor. They saw that his features and his frame were trembling with extreme agitation; and failing to comprehend its cause in a glass cup of not the slightest pretensions to use or ornament, they remained, with anxious gaze, to await some further development of such unwonted symptoms. ‘Look—it is done—it is found—I have found it—I, Masthlion!’ gasped the potter, with another laugh. ‘At last—at last!’ he cried, rolling and smoothing the vessel in his grimy hands, with the ecstasy of a miser fondling his treasure heaps. Grave doubts arose in the mind of Cestus as to the actual state of his kinsman’s mind; and giving him a glance of suspicion, and another of contempt on the paltry object of his delight, he growled as follows—‘As far as I can see, potter, it is a thing that ought to be well lost beyond redemption, and a thing of regret, if found again in any dusthole.’ Masthlion vented another chuckling laugh, and turned his eyes on the face of Neæra, who rested her hand on his shoulder, and touched the glass with the slender fingers of her other hand. Timidity and doubt were in her actions and on her countenance. She returned his gaze with affectionate concern and said soothingly, ‘You seemed pleased to have found it, father. Had you lost it long? Why do you prize it? Tell me!’