In the last twenty years Mr.Kellner had destroyed some twenty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in this way.

I may add that while Mr.Kellner had succeeded in making diamonds of large size he had never made a perfect one until eight years ago.

But meanwhile the expenses of the work, as you will understand, were enormous, so during the past eight years about a million dollars' worth of diamonds have been sold, one or two at a time, to meet this expense." He paused a moment, then resumed musingly: "All this, you understand, is not the work of a day Mr.Kellner was nearly eighty-one years old, and it was fifty-eight years ago that he began work here.

The cubes there were made and placed in position thirty years ago; the guns have been there for twenty-eight years-- so long, in fact, that recollection of them has passed from the minds of the men who made them.

And, until four years ago, he was assisted by his son, Miss Kellner's father, and her brother.