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this week," Digby growled, "and you'd better think it over. You'll have a hailstorm about your head soon, when they've taken in the drift of our circular."

The boy entered with a telegram, Wendern's heart leaped. "This may possibly be from Lant," he said. "It is!" he tore it open, and read triumphantly

"In London immediately. Call meeting for Thursday next week. Letter follows."

Digby gave a grunt. Shaw, easily appeased, said, "Well, I suppose we shall know something then?"

"All I can say to you now, gentlemen, is that the meeting will take place on Thursday. Mr Lant's telegram has come at the psychological moment."

Digby considered for a moment before he said, "Well, we'll wait till Lant comes and no longer."

"Not minute longer," Lazarus added.

The deputation turned to go, but the parson stopped it to say a parting word,-"Remember, Mr Wendern, that it isn't only ourselves who will suffer," he almost chanted, "but those innocent ones who belong to us; they will have to pay the penalty of our reprehensible carelessness."

"I say, can't directors be had up now?" asked the youth who had invested his mother's insurance money. "Sent to prison and that sort of thing?

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"There ought to be a hanging penalty attached to it," Digby grunted.

"Quite right, it ought to be a capital offence," the Jew snuffled.

"I should like to come to the execution," Digby was recovering.

"You shall all of you come to mine," Wendern told them cynically-"if it takes place. I fear you must wait to assure yourself of that probability till after the meeting, of which a notice will be sent you. Good morning."

Shaw turned back and held out a hand. "I believe you'll get us out of the hole if you can," he said cheerily.

Wendern's face lighted up as he answered, "There isn't going to be any hole, but if there is I'll get you out."

"Good morning, Mr Wendern," the parson said severely.

"He takes it pretty coolly," Digby was heard telling the others as they went downstairs, "but we shall hear what Mr Christopher Lant has to say."

Wendern gave a gasp of relief when they had gone, and pulled out the latest cablegram of the Dock case. "They shall be safe in any case," he said to himself. He looked at Lant's telegram. "He can't be a scoundrel," he thought; "reckless and easy-going, but not a scoundrel."

Suddenly he remembered and rang the bell. "Is Mr Parker here?" he asked the boy. "Yes, sir, waiting." "Tell him to come up."

(To be continued.)

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PITFALLS FOR COLLECTORS.

BY MRS ANDREW LANG.

"C'EST un vieux truc mais toujours bon" is a classic phrase familiar to the readers of French sensational novels, and dear to their hearts, for does it not promise another success to the "chenapan de la pire espèce" so much beloved by all of us? M. Paul Eudel's book, Trucs et Truqueurs,'1 Tricks and Tricksters, is a collection of "trucs" old and new in every branch of art and literature, combined with a few hints to enable us to detect imposture when we see it, and an endless number of amusing stories.

Yet many of the modern forgers are not only artists, but great artists, and in the opinion of an English archæologist the art of Greece may be restored by means of their nefarious skill. More than one precious object in our museums, to which the attention of the public was especially called by a slip pasted on the foot, expatiating on the beauty of the workmanship, has recently been discovered to be the work of one of the living Greek brotherhood. Their forgeries are to be found amongst the finest collections, and in many cases it is only some unforeseen accident that leads to their exposure. But though the technical ability of these men is often nearly as great as that of the artists they imitate, there is one gift the lack of which fixes a great gulf between them-that want of imagination which may our be said to be characteristic of modern art in all its branches.

"A collector should know everything," so says M. Eudel, and those of us who possess even the humblest curiosities will close his book with something of the depression Alnaschar must have felt when he saw the basket of glass which was to have led to fortune in fragments at his feet. Our engravings, our gems, vases will never give us the thrill of pride that thrilled us before we ate of M. Eudel's apple. Instead of displaying them to every new-comer, we shall avoid the subject of antiquities, and if we are wise, shall follow the example of one of his friends, who refused to allow him to examine his collection for fear of the revelations that might follow.

Forgery, it is needless to remark, is as old as art itself, but it is only in this epoch of millionaires that it has assumed such terrific proportions. To an ignorant man, a high price is often the only criterion of value. "It must be a button off Napoleon's coat or they would never charge

1 Librairie Molière, 17 Rue Richelieu, Paris.

me five hundred francs for it," he reasons, and in the face of such encouragement Napoleonic buttons naturally spring up under his feet. The forger grows bolder every day, and the contents of his workshop are given a place beside undoubted antiquities in some international exhibition or world-famous sale at the Hôtel Drouot. They are frequently veritable works of art, demanding costly materials, skill, time, and patience. Why, one may ask, under these conditions, do forgers shelter themselves behind the name of a man or a period? Well, we have only ourselves to thank for it. It is not the object and the skill that we want, but merely the name and the period. And this is probably the cause of the indulgence shown even by experts to these kinds of frauds. They understand the temptation, and are amused by the cleverness of the execution. "Il faut de l'audace" is a doctrine which will always find friends.

A century since, antiquities were of comparatively small account, or Charles Sauvageot, a very poor young violinist of the French Opera House, could hardly have made a collection which even fifty-five years ago was valued by the Louvre at £16,000. Now the valuation would be enormously greater, though it is hardly likely to be as much as ten millions of francs, the figure given by M. Eudel. During the thirty years or more that Sauvageot

remained at the Opera-he retired for good in 1829,every spare instant was spent in collecting. Beginning with Chinese curiosities, he soon abandoned them for French art, especially that of the Valois period, and Francis I. was "son roi de prédilection." For once, the time and the place and the lover were all together. The treasures of centuries, scattered by the Revolution, were to be found all over Paris, and to be picked up for nothing by any one who knew their worth. The hours passed by Sauvageot in bricà-brac shops taught him patience, experience, taste, and a rapid judgment. During many years he was perhaps the only person in Paris who possessed an eye-and a taste for Renaissance art, and the two small rooms in which he lived were crowded with pictures, engravings, pottery, furniture, chests, and everything else that might have decorated the house of a Valois noble. He was lucky, too, which all collectors are not, and on many occasions sold a work of art for at least fifty times the amount he had paid for it. But in one respect he differed from the majority of collectors. It was the "match" he liked, and not "the manner of the wooing," and when, at seventy, signs of his last illness began to manifest themselves, a mortal dread fell upon him that the collection which had grown under his hand slowly and lovingly should be dispersed, so, while he was yet living, he presented it to the Louvre.

"No, no; not that! Help me to dig out the sarcophagus from the sand and lift the cover."

Let us now turn from the was possible. The sarcophlucky to the unlucky collector. agus dated from the twelfth Some years ago the famous dynasty, and was admirably Egyptologist, Professor K-preserved. Turning, he made of determined to in- a sign to the fellah, who dulge himself with a visit appeared to misunderstand it, to the Nile, and stopped near for the man uncrossed his the first cataract in order to legs and rose, holding out a explore the temples of Philæ. handful of dried dates and The usual crowd of fellaheen a cake. with scarabs to sell pressed round him, but one sharper than the rest noted the Professor's eyes wandering eagerly towards the ruins, and in a mysterious whisper invited him to come and examine a necropolis on the river bank, which was, so far, unknown to the savants. The suggestion was one after K-'s own heart, and he signed to the Arab to lead on and he would follow. Silently they walked for some distance, and then the guide stopped before a mud hut and pointed to a sarcophagus a few paces off, still half-buried in the sand. "Mine. Sell," said the Arab, and K needed no more words, but flung himself on the sand to inspect the painted sarcophagus. With trembling hands he scratched away the sand till at length there lay before him the procession of harvesters, reapers, threshers, kneaders, and water-carriers so familiar in Egyptian art. "Anubia,” the name of the occupant, was duly written, and beneath it the inscription

"Let Osiris give the funeral meats, that the dead may eat of them."

The Egyptian did not need to be told twice. He called to some friends who were squatting in the distance, and between them the sarcophagus was set free, and the Professor was able to lift the lid. There lay the mummy in its linen wrappings surrounded by a bead necklace, ivory needles, sandals, and a mirror for its "double" to use, while in place of its head was painted mask, with two black eyes in a setting of white enamel. What joy to present it to his museum at

a

! The price was high,higher than K expected,

but he agreed to it without hesitation, only stipulating that it should at once be placed in a boat and taken down the Nile to Alexandria and there put on board a vessel bound for the North. On the quay of Alexandria the purchase-money was to be paid down.

Two months later the precious case was deposited in one of the rooms of the museum As he read, the enthusiasm of where the Comof the Professor waxed as hot mittee of Antiquities hastened as the sun itself. No doubt to inspect it. The packing

VOL. CXCI.-NO. MCLVI.

P

had been carefully done, and Professor K- -noted with relief that everything was in as good a condition as when the coffin had quitted the banks of the Nile. But his glow of triumph faded as the examination proceeded, and doubts were writ large on the faces of his colleagues. One tapped the side of the case, and shook his head as the dull sound of mill-board responded; another objected that there was a lack of style in the prayer to Osiris; a third was struck by the modern look of the decoration; while a fourth-most damning of all-declared that from the smell of the varnish it was quite plain it had been put on recently.

The poor discoverer was now ready to weep, yet a little hope still lingered in his heart that, even if the case were a fraud, the mummy within might somehow prove a reality. But the removal of the lid was a signal for fresh discussions, all tending to prove to the unfortunate Professor how easily he had been taken in. The linen wrappings were whiter than they should have been after more than three thousand years of seclusion; the eyes of the mask suggested glass rather than enamel; and the bands wound round the body after the embalmers had done their work were made of different material from those of other mummies. A few of the committee upheld the judgment of K, but the greater number sided against

him. Leaning against a pillar, the Professor listened in silence while his colleagues consulted together how to ascertain the truth. Of course the endless spirals of linen could be unrolled, but once exposed to the air might not the embalmed figure collapse into dust? Yet it was impossible to give this mummy "snug lying" among its fellows when beneath the manifold coverings might repose not even a sacred cat, but

some

unclean creature. A museum, like the wife of Cæsar, must be above suspicion.

What was to be done? "At this moment of acute tension a shout of victory burst from the Professor of Physical Science. 'Eureka!' he cried, and dashing from the room returned in a few minutes with an apparatus under under his arm.

Now,' he said, 'the Röntgen rays will tell us.' And what the Röntgen rays told them was that Anubia of the period of the twelfth dynasty was a wicker-work dummy.

"Never believe in the authenticity of any object you have not seen dug up yourself," is the counsel of M. Eudel, "and even then you may be tricked;" and he gives examples of savants who have set their seal on forgeries which would never have been found out had their authors not grown careless with impunity, and flooded the market with rarities till the suspicions of the experts were awakened. In Italy, where the excava

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