"'Then did he take up ye sword fashioned by ye devilish art of ye East from two fine blades found in ye tomb,'" Val quoted from the record of Brother Anselm, the friar who had accompanied Sir Roderick on his crusading. "Do you suppose that that part's true? Could the Luck have been made from two other swords found in an old tomb?" "Not impossible. The Saracens were master metal workers. Look at the Damascus blades." "It all sounds like a fairy-tale," commented Ricky. "A sword with magic powers beaten out of two other swords found in a tomb. And the whole thing done under the direction of an Arab astrologer." "You've got to admit," broke in Val, "that Sir Roderick had luck after it was given to him. He came home a wealthy man and he died a Baron. And his descendants even survived the Wars of the Roses when four-fifths of the great English families were wiped out." "'And fortune continued to smile,'" Rupert took up the story, "'until a certain wild Miles Ralestone staked the Luck of his house on the turn of a card--and lost.'" "O-o-oh!" Ricky squirmed forward in her chair. "Now comes the pirate. Tell us that, Rupert." "You know the story by heart now," he objected. "We never heard it here, where some of it really happened. Tell it, please, Rupert!" "In your second childhood?" he asked. "Not out of my first yet," she answered promptly. "Pretty please, Rupert." "Miles Ralestone, Marquess of Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic. And he even threw the family Luck across the gaming table." "'The Luck went from him who did it no honor,'" Val repeated slowly. "I read that in that old letter among your papers, Rupert." "Yes, the Luck went from him. He survived Marston Moor; he survived the death of his royal master, Charles the First, on the scaffold. He lived long enough to witness the return of the Stuarts to England. But the Luck was gone, and with it the good fortune of his line. Rupert, his son, was but a penniless hanger-on at the royal court; the manor of Lorne a fire-gutted wreckage. "Rupert followed James Stuart from England when that monarch became a fugitive to escape the wrath of his subjects. And the Marquess of Lorne sank to the role of pot-house bully in the back lanes of Paris." "And then?" prompted Val. "And then a miracle occurred. Rupert was employed by his master on a secret mission to London, and there the Luck came again into his hands. Perhaps by murder. But he died miserably enough of a heavy cold got by lying in a ditch to escape Dutch William's soldiers." "'So is this perilous Luck come again into our hands. Then did I persevere to mend the fortunes of my house.' That's what Rupert's son Richard wrote about the Luck," Ricky recalled. "Richard, the first pirate."