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"Lay the book upon the bench," he ordered "I will unwrap it!"

Coers deftly undid the familiar with each turn and twist Then off cah brown seaweed fabric and afterward certain coverings of tough shark-skin neatly sewn

"The book!" cried the patriarch "Now behold it!"

"That?" exclaie is separately preserved, wherefore it is so very thick," explained the old man "See here?"

He turned the leaves reverently Stern, peering closely by the diether by loops of heavy gold wire Each page was held between two large plates of es by some black substance like varnish or bitumen

"Only thus," explained the patriarch, "could we hope to save this precious thing It was done o, and even then the book was ale and use"

"I should say so!" ejaculated Stern Even sealed in its air-tight covering, he saw that every leaf was yellow, broken, rotten, till the rated it to powder A sense of the infinitudes of tied by this volume overwhelmed him; he drew a deep breath, reached out his hand and touched the wondrous relic of the world that was

"Long ago," continued the old an to cruold plates, word by word, letter by letter, every point and line And our faold and put away the other But in e and the gold plates went for loot to make thein the task again, but was killed in a raid I, too, inyouth, had plans for the work; but blindness struck me before I could find peace to labor in So now all that ree and these tattered scraps And, if you save us not, soon all, all will be lost forever!"

Muchto his brain Here visibly before him he beheld the final link that tied these lost Folk to the other ti thread What history could this book have told? What vast catastrophes, fah? In what unwritten cataclyseneration had the hu to it and cherished it?