I saw that we could not each of us have one of these, and here I was again in a difficulty; but since the ingots of silver were of about an equal weight, I took one of them myself and gave an ornament to each of my companions.  Hercus, however, would not agree to this, and he showed, truly enough, that the ingots were worth no more than their weight in metal; whereas the rings were of much greater value, on account of being curious specimens of ancient art.  He therefore asked me to take a few of the coins in order to make a fair division.  The remaining coins, of which there was a considerable quantity, were then counted and equally shared amongst us.

We had now left one ingot of silver, one brooch, some odd fragments of silver, and a small black stone which had a metal ring round it; and the sharing of these cost more trouble than all the other articles together.  They were all, so far as we could judge, of unequal values.  The stone was considered worthless, except for the little band of metal with which it was clasped.  The brooch was only about half the weight of the ingot, and it was not counted precious, because already each of us had three like it, while the small pile of silver fragments was not worth half the ingot {i}.  I thought I was acting very fairly when I suggested that Hercus should have what remained, because, I said, if it had not been for him we would have had nothing at all.

“’Deed you’ll do nothing of the kind,” objected Kinlay.  “What for should Hercus take all?”

“Well, well,” I said, somewhat ruffled, I admit, at Tom’s greed, “you needn’t be so sulky.  Take you and divide the things.  You’ll not do it any fairer.”

But Tom saw a way of sharing the things which suited himself, if it did not quite agree with my own views of fairness.  To Willie he gave the brooch, to Robbie he passed the pile of fragments; and now he held the two remaining pieces, the ingot of silver and the little black stone.  We awaited with much interest his final decision.  With an unpleasant flash of his dark eyes he cast the stone to my end of the rude table, and quietly thrust the bar of silver with his other possessions into his capacious pockets.

I tried hard to check the words that rose to my lips.  Throughout the afternoon I had noticed Tom’s pointed objections to many things I had done or had proposed to do.  He had objected to Thora accompanying us on the sealing expedition.  He had disagreed with the disposal of the dead hen harrier; other little incidents, most of which had testified to his deep-rooted selfishness, I had not failed to notice.  More than all, I remembered how he had pocketed the jewelled fragments of the helmet, and kept the knowledge of their value from us all.  As for the opinions of the other two lads regarding him, it was Willie Hercus who had called him a “sneak” in school that morning, and Robbie Rosson, I knew, had certainly no love for Tom, who had persistently bullied him.