"This was lent to me by a friend who suffered from an embarrassment of riches," Daniel explained after the torch had been extinguished and stowed, and the gate locked. They were examining a squarish plate of what appeared to be gold. It had been treated very disrespectfully and was scraped, battered out of plane, salt-caked, and tar-stained. But it was still obviously gold, hand-hammered to a thickness of perhaps an eighth of an inch. "As you have probably guessed, there are more of them stowed below; but we only withdraw as much as can be wrought in a single day."