And then an odd fancy came over me. In the midst of the yellow heap, ever increasing, on our side of the table, lay the pair of diamond buckles. I could see rays of an infinite variety of colours spirting out like little jets of flame, as the light caught the stones, and I felt a queer conviction that Elmscott's luck was in some way bound up with them. So strongly did the whim possess me that I lifted them from the table to test my thought. For so long as took the players to play two games, I held the buckles in my hands; and both games my cousin lost. I replaced them on the table, and he began to win once more with the old regularity, the heaps dwindling there and growing here, until at length all the money lay silted at my cousin's hand. You might have believed that a spell had been suddenly lifted from the company. Faces relaxed and softened, eyes lost their keen light, feet shuffled in a new freedom, and the heavy silence was torn by a Babel of voices. Strangely enough, all joined with Elmscott in attributing his change of fortune to my presence. Snuff-boxes were opened and their contents pressed upon me, and I think that I might have dined at no cost of myself for a full twelve months had I accepted the invitations I received. But the cessation of the play had waked me to my own necessities, and I turned to my cousin. "Now," said I, but I got no further, for he exclaimed: "Not yet, Morrice! There's my house in Monmouth Square." "Your house?" I repeated. "There's the manor of Silverdale." "You have not lost that?" I cried. "Every brick of it," says he. "Then," says I in a quick passion, "you must win them back as best you may. I'll bide no longer." "Nay, lad!" he entreated, laying hold of my sleeve. "You cannot mean that. See, when you came in, I had but these poor buckles left. They were all my fortune. Stay but for a little. For if you go you take all my luck with you. 'Am deadly sure of it." "I have stayed too long as it is" I replied, and wrenched myself free from his grasp. "Well, take what money you need! But you are no more than a stone," he whimpered. "The philosopher's stone, then," said I, and I caught up a couple of handsfull of gold and turned on my heel. But with a sudden cry I stopped. For as I turned, I glanced across the table to his opponent, and I saw his face change all in a moment to a strangely grey and livid colour. And to make the sight yet more ghastly, he still sat bolt upright in his chair, without a gesture, without a motion, a figure of marble, save that his eyes still burned steadily beneath his brows. "Great God!" I cried. "He is dying." "It is the morning," he said in a quiet voice, which had yet a very thrilling resonance, and it flashed across me with a singular uneasiness that this was the first time that he had spoken during all those hours.