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Nothing could be seen above ground of the sunken sanctuary
except a strong wooden hut, of the sort recently run up for many
military and official purposes, the wooden floor of which was
indeed a mere platform over the excavated cavity below.
A soldier stood as a sentry outside, and a superior soldier,
an Anglo-Indian officer of distinction, sat writing at the desk inside.
Indeed, the sightseers soon found that this particular sight
was surrounded with the most extraordinary precautions.
I have compared the silver coin to the Koh-i-noor, and in one sense
it was even conventionally comparable, since by a historical
accident it was at one time almost counted among the Crown jewels,
or at least the Crown relics, until one of the royal princes publicly
restored it to the shrine to which it was supposed to belong.
Other causes combined to concentrate official vigilance upon it;
there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects,
and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over
bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their
clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method
caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets.
Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man
with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and humorous eye--
a contradiction borne out by his conduct, for he at once derided
the safeguards and yet insisted on them.
"I don't care a button myself for Paul's Penny, or such things,"
he admitted in answer to some antiquarian openings from the clergyman
who was slightly acquainted with him, "but I wear the King's coat,
you know, and it's a serious thing when the King's uncle leaves
a thing here with his own hands under my charge. But as for
saints and relics and things, I fear I'm a bit of a Voltairian;
what you would call a skeptic."
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