One look--and he fell back in his chair, while Hildegarde quietly sat down on the floor and cried.

For the diamonds were there! Big diamonds and little diamonds,--some rough and dull, others flashing out sparks of light, as if they shone the brighter for their long imprisonment; some tinged with yellow or blue, some with the clear white radiance which is seen in nothing else save a dewdrop when the morning sun first strikes upon it.

There they lay,--a handful of stones, a little heap of shining crystals; but enough to pay off the mortgage on Hartley's Glen and leave the farmer a rich man for life.
Dame Hartley was the first to rouse herself from the silent amaze into which they had fallen.

"Well, well!" she said, wiping her eyes, "the ways of Providence are mysterious.

To think of it, after all these years! Why, Jacob! Come, my dear, come! You ain't crying, now that the Lord, and this blessed child under Him, has taken away all your trouble ?" But the farmer, to his own great amazement, _was_ crying.