"He has a great jewel--it is, I have no doubt, a diamond--of a great value. It is not his! There is no right of him to it! It should be mine. If you get it for me one-quarter of it in money shall be yours! And it is of a great value." "Where does your cousin live? What is he?" "Beck Street, Soho. He has a shop--a café--Café des Bons Camarades. And he give me not a crrrust--if I starve!" It scarcely seemed likely that the keeper of a little foreign café in a back street of Soho would be possessed of a jewel a quarter of whose value would be prize enough to tempt Dorrington to take a new case up. But Dorrington bore with the man a little longer. "What is this jewel you talk of?" he asked. "And if you don't know enough about it to be quite sure whether it is a diamond or not, what _do_ you know?" "Listen! The stone I have never seen; but that it is a diamond makes probable. What else so much value? And it is much value that gives my cousin so great care and trouble--_cochon!_ Listen! I relate to you. My father--he was charcoal-burner at Bonneuil, department of Seine. My uncle--the father of my cousin--also was charcoal-burner. The grandfather--charcoal-burner also; and his father and his grandfather before him--all burners of charcoal, at Bonneuil. Now perceive. The father of my grandfather was of the great Revolution--a young man, great among those who stormed the Bastille, the Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville, brave, and a leader. Now, when palaces were burnt and heads were falling there was naturally much confusion. Things were lost--things of large value. What more natural? While so many were losing the head from the shoulders, it was not strange that some should lose jewels from the neck. And when these things were lost, who might have a greater right to keep them than the young men of the Revolution, the brave, and the leaders, they who did the work?" "If you mean that your respectable great-grandfather stole something, you needn't explain it any more," Dorrington said. "I quite understand."