The Dark Star

As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the

contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on

such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among

the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial

curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which

ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from

the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary

kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath

and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now

once more in full swing.

Her father lay on his invalid's chair, reading; his rubber-shod

crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside

the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child's stockings and

underwear.

Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove

glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always

fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze

furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the

big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon

into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.

Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box--a

toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of

water-colours and crayon pencils.

Some centuries ago Pandora's box let loose a world of troubles; Herr

Wilner's box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child

whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.

It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of

some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong--rupee silver,eg

perhaps--strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in

shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a

silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage;

and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.

Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of

articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest

care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother's command, returned

to their several places in Herr Wilner's box.

There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers

in sheaths of fretted silver--never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly

understood, except by the child's father.

There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the

unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and

cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child's mother, much to

the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.