"By Heavens, Holmes," exclaimed Dicky, who after his late lofty flight had characteristically relapsed into one of his most imbecile moods, "this is wonderful!" We bore the letter back to the billiard-room. "Four sheets!" murmured The Freak dejectedly. "Well, the longer I look at them the less I shall like them. Here goes!" He began to unfold the crackling document. "What is that protuberance down there, between your finger and thumb?" I enquired. "It may epitomise the letter for you." Dicky turned the envelope upside down, and shook it over the billiard-table. Something fell out, rolled a short distance, and lay sparkling and shimmering on the green cloth. Dicky picked up the ring very slowly, and regarded it long and intently. Then he turned to me. "Thank God!" he said, softly and quite reverently; and I knew he spoke less for himself than for a certain superior young woman upstairs, who considered him flippant, lacking in depth, and altogether unworthy of her. CHAPTER X STILL AT LARGE I saw very little of The Freak the following winter. For one thing, I went abroad again. The Government of the Auricula Protectorate had decided to connect their capital with the sea by means of a canal. I happened to know the district, for I had been engaged eight years previously upon the great dam, thirty miles from Auricula, which now holds in beneficent restraint the turbid waters of the Rumbolo River. I accordingly applied for work in connection with the scheme. By the greatest luck in the world one Vandeleur, C.B., a magnate of no small standing in the Auricula district, happened to be home on leave. He had visited my dam in his official capacity, and had noted that it was still standing. He spoke the word, and I got my canal. The next four months I spent upon the continent of Africa, sketching, surveying, and drawing up specifications. Then I came home to be married. At the very first dinner-party to which we were bidden on our return from our honeymoon I encountered The Freak.