Cadellin’s voice trembled with rage and shame as he spoke, and he crashed the butt of his staff against the rock floor.

“Lost it?” cried Susan. “You can’t have done! I mean, if it’s a special stone it should be easy to find if it’s lying around somewhere in here… shouldn’t it?”

The wizard smiled grimly. “But it is not here. Of that, at least, I am certain. Come, and I shall show you proof of what I saw.”

He beckoned the children towards an opening in the wall and into a short tunnel not more than thirty feet in length, and half-way down Cadellin stopped before a bowl-shaped recess about six inches high and a yard above the level of the floor.

“There is the throne of Firefrost.” he said, “and you will see that it is now vacant.”

They passed through into a cavern similar to the last. and Colin and Susan halted in awe.

Here lay the treasure, piled in banks of jewels, and gold, and silver, which stretched away into the distance like sand-dunes in a desert.

“Oh,” gasped Susan, “How beautiful! Look at those colours!”

“You would not think them so beautiful,” said Cadellin, “if you had run through your fingers every diamond, pearl, sapphire, amethyst, opal, carbuncle, garnet, topaz, emerald, and ruby in the whole of this all too spacious cave, in search of a stone that is not there!”

“I spent five years labouring in this cave, and as many weeks scouring every gallery and path in Fundindelve, but without success. I can only think that that knave of a farmer was a greedier and more cunning rogue than he appeared, and that, as he followed me from here, laden as he was with wealth, his eyes fell upon the stone, and he slyly took it without a word. Perhaps he thought it was merely a pretty bauble, or he may even have seen me replace it after I had tethered his horse with sleep while he crammed his pockets here.