THE STEEL FLEA
fail, let me have something to show to the Emperor."
The gunsmiths reassured him fully.
"We will not injure the delicate work," said they, "and we will not exchange the diamond, and two weeks is time enough for us; and against that occasion of your return you shall have something worthy to show to the Emperor's Magnificence." But, all the same, they did not say precisely what that something was to be.
VI
Platoff departed from Tula; and three of the gunsmiths, the most skilful of them all—one a squint-eyed, left-handed smith with a birth-mark on his cheek and the hair upon his temples plucked out in the course of his apprenticeship—bade their comrades and their households farewell, and saying nothing to any one, took their wallets,
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