But looking from the window she could see no sign of her late caller, and she dismissed the subject from her mind at once. * * * * * Yet she had not heard the last of it. In the evening mail a letter came for her. It was in an unfamiliar handwriting, and was written on a single plain sheet of paper. The note ran: MISS CLYDE, DEAR MADAM: I will pay you one hundred dollars for the pin left to you by your aunt. Please make every effort to find it, and lay it on the South gatepost to-night at ten o'clock. Don't let anybody see you. You will receive the money to-morrow by registered mail. No harm is meant, but I want to get ahead of that other man who is making a collection. Put it in a box, and be sly about it. I'll get it all right. You don't know me, but I would scorn to write an anonymous letter, and I willingly sign my name, WILLIAM ASHTON. That evening Iris told Lucille all about it. "What awful rubbish," commented that lady. "But I know people who make just such foolish collections. One friend of mine collects buttons from her friends' dresses. Why, I'm afraid to go there, with a gown trimmed with fancy buttons; she rips one off when you're not looking! It's really a mania with her. Now two men are after your pin. Have you got it? I'd sell it for a hundred dollars, if I were you. And that man will pay. Those collectors are generally honest." "No; I haven't it." And Iris proceeded to tell of Agnes' connection with the matter. "H'm, a Luck! I've heard of them, too. Sometimes they're worth keeping. Oh, no, I'm not really superstitious, but an old Luck is greatly to be reverenced, if nothing more. If that pin was Ursula's Luck, you ought to keep it, my dear." "But I haven't it. If it is a Luck, and if its possession would help me--would help to free Win--I'd like to see the collector that could get it away from me!" "Oh, it mightn't be so potent as all that, but after all, a Luck is a Luck, and I'd be careful how I let one get away." "But it has got away. And, too, I let friend Pollock go off with the idea that he had it; now, if I were to let somebody else take it, Mr. Pollock would have good reason to chide me." "But how did this other man know about it?" "I've no idea, unless he and Pollock are friends and compare notes." "But how did--what's his name?--Ashton, know it was lost?" "That's so, how did he? It's very mysterious. What shall I do?" "Nothing at all. You can't put it on the gatepost, if you don't know where it is. But I'd certainly try to find it. Ask Polly what she knows about it." "I will, to-morrow. She's gone to bed by now. Poor old thing, she works pretty hard." "I know it. I'll be glad when I get a whole staff of new servants. But I'll wait till this excitement is over." That was Miss Darrel's attitude. She had received her inheritance and selfishly took little interest in that of the other heirs. CHAPTER IX