| The Queer Amethyst Quarrel - page four |
| But Addison was now chiefly intent on recovering the crystals. He and I hitched up and drove over to Lurvey's Mills, in quest of Sam, and having found him we demanded that he surrender those crystals, forth with. He refused, in terms not necessary to record here. The referees had awarded them to him, he said, and no one could make him give them up. "Go to the law if you want to," he cried. "I don't care where the line is. You proposed referees, yourselves, and the referees gave me the stones." It transpired that he had sold the crystals already, for a trifle� and spent the money�and as he was now in his twenty-fifth year, his father declined to be responsible for his acts. "Boys, the joke is on me!" the Old Squire confessed, as we talked the incident over at home. "I had better have kept quiet. My peace plan was premature." We kept the amethysts that were left us, for a number of years. Several of the crystals were given to friends who were making collections of minerals. Eventually some of the best were sold to a metropolitan jewelry firm to be cut as gems, and for these we received a good price. No finer amethysts have thus far been found in New England. What was left of the crystals, along with the cabinet that held them, were lost in the old farmhouse fire, many years later. The End |