“This,” explained Lawrence, drawing the emerald ring from his finger and holding it out. “It belongs to you, you know.” “Not at all. That is yours. It is part of the bargain, and I am sure you have earned it.” “But it’s worth a king’s ransom,” Barry protested. “I really can’t take it. You have given me more than enough without that. Besides, it is much too rare a jewel for me to be wearing.” The prince darted a mischievous glance at Shirley Rives. “Perhaps there is some one else who might be willing to relieve you of its care,” he murmured, his fine eyes twinkling. There was no mistaking his meaning, and the girl dropped her lids, while a rush of color crimsoned her lovely face. The next instant, however, she lifted them again and looked bravely into Barry’s questioning eyes. “Perhaps--some day,” she murmured. THE END. RUBY LIGHT. By BURKE JENKINS. CHAPTER I. QUICK ACTION. At a quarter to five in the afternoon, when the thing really began as far as I myself was concerned, I happened to be swinging my legs from the stringpiece of the town dock of Port Washington. How and why I had been sitting there some two hours, in a hot, summer sun, will develop in due course. Sufficient now to state that my frame of mind was one of general disgust at the world’s handling; this coupled to a dark-brown ennui. Quite listlessly I had been running my eye over a trimlined launch of the “day-cruiser” type that was moored, bow and stern, to a float below me. For the most part, I love boats far more than people; so it must have been something out of the ordinary that made me shift my attention suddenly from the craft itself to the two men who manned it. One, a clean-limbed, undersized man of about forty, much spattered with gilt braid and buttons, I sized up as the captain. He stood on the float alongside the diminutive wheelhouse, steadying the slight roll of the craft with his left hand, while his right constantly sought his watch in nervous consultation of the exact time. “A precise and pompous bit of a fool!” I remember grunting to myself. But my gaze happened that instant to travel toward the other. This fellow hadn’t quitted the boat, but busied himself lumbering, I thought, about the engine, which was situated in the after cockpit. A loosely knit chap he was, whose fingers were all thumbs. And I, who fairly caress a bit of machinery, wondered how in thunder such a clumsy cuss could ever have got the position as engineer of so trim a little vessel. But the little skipper again caught my attention, for he suddenly snapped his watch case and quickened to attention. His gaze never left the road that led to the wharf, which, by the way, was the way to the railroad station. An auto, quick-driven and skidding slightly in the dust, rounded the turn by the shore hotel and took to the wharf’s planks.