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"Ah! Would you?" and he flung a hastily-snatched rock at a rattlesnake that had begun its dry, chirring defiance on top of what once had been a counter

The snake vanished, while the rock rebounding, crashed through glass

Stern wheeled about with a cry of joy For there, he saw, still stood near the back of the shop a showcase froht a sheen of tarnishedover the loose dooring, rown There in the case, preserved as you have seen Egyptian relics two or three thousand years old, in ineer beheld incalculable treasures He thrilled with a savage, strange delight

Another bloith the sledge, delass

He trembled with excitement as he chose what he most needed

"I certainly do understand now," said he, "why the New Zealanders took Captain Cook's old barrel-hoops and refused his cash Same here! All the money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife--" as he seized a corroded blade set in a horn handle, yelloith age And eagerly he continued the hunt

Fifteen minutes later he had accumulated a pair of scissors, two rubber combs, another knife, a revolver, an autoes and a Cosmos bottle

All these he stowed in a warped, , taken fron, "Leather Goods," lay ah, now, for the first load," he judged, more excited than if he had chanced upon a blue-clay bed cra, anyho for Beatrice!"

Joyously as a schoolboy with a pocketful of neon marbles, he made his exit from the ruins of the hardware store, and started back toward the tower

But hardly had he gone a hundred feet when all at once he drew back with a sharp cry of wonder and alarm

There at his feet, in plain view under a littlethat held hi the sledge to do so

"What? What?" he sta he stared idened, unco eyes

"Merciful God! Hohat--?" cried he

The thing he held in his hand was a broad, fat, flint assegai-point!