"Just before the man snatched it. The radiance seemed to die away, and the power appeared to falter. When I felt that I was holding a mere ornament, dull and dead and cold, the thief snatched it away from me." Dane rose slowly, and nodded towards his uncle. "It certainly was a priest who stole the jewel," he observed. "Probably it is now on its way back to Japan. You will never get it, uncle, as now it will be guarded more carefully." "Why do you think the thief is a priest?" questioned the Squire abruptly. "Well, you thought so yourself," said Theodore lightly. "And it seems natural to suppose that the priests of Kitzuki would be more anxious than other people to get back their sacred talisman." "Talisman!" echoed Patricia. Theodore turned heavily towards her. "Yes," he said emphatically. "The emerald in some way has been impregnated with the radiating power you mention, for some purpose which I cannot say. Perhaps, as you suggest, to keep off evil and darkness. At all events, the man who stole it had some way of neutralizing the power, which he did when he saw you staring at the jewel. It might be that he could not take it from you until he had destroyed the barrier of light which you felt. But in any case, seeing that he was able to take away the force, he must have been a priest of the Temple, who knew all about the Mikado Jewel. You understand." "No," faltered Patricia. "I don't understand at all." "Neither do I," growled the Squire; "but I intend to recover the jewel some day and in some way. It is mine, and I shall regain it." Theodore shook his head. "You will never regain it," he said firmly. "It is now on its way back to the shrine whence it was taken by Pentreddle." CHAPTER IX BASIL The odd conversation with the Squire and Theodore Dane strangely affected Patricia, and in rather an unhealthy way. She was an ordinary commonsense Irish girl, whose father had been a matter-of-fact military man, and in her conventional life there had been no place for the supernatural. And when, with Colonel Carrol's death, came his daughter's subsequent poverty, Patricia had been far too much taken up with battling for existence to think of the Unseen. To be over-inquisitive about the next world seemed to her sensible mind unnecessary, since there was so much to be done on earth. She knew very well that she was sensitive to things which other people did not perceive, but she put this down to having highly-strung nerves, and thought very little about the matter. Now, apparently, the time had come for her to consciously use organs hitherto unguessed at.