jewel-case, for it was rather loose, and she was afraid of its getting lost. But somehow or other I didn't quite believe what she said, so I asked her once more, and she snapped me up so sharply that I found it was best to ask no more questions about it. However, when I heard about your daughter wearing a ring with a red stone in it, and that it was looking out for an owner, it occurred to me at once that it might be Lydia Philips's ring--that she had dropped it by accident, and didn't like to own that she had lost it for some reason best known to herself, and that she'd be only too glad to get it back again. So when your daughter lent it me yesterday, I took it up in the evening; and getting her by herself in the parlour, I pulled it out, and said, `See, Miss Lyddy, what will you give me for finding _this_ for you?' I expected thanks at the least; but to my great surprise she turned first very pale, and then very red; and then, taking up the ring between her finger and thumb as cautiously as if she was afraid it would bite or burn her, she said--but I didn't believe her--`It ain't mine, and I don't want to have anything to do with it.' I tried to make her change her opinion, and told her I knew her ring as well as she knew it herself, that she must have lost it, and that I was certain this was the very ring she had showed me so often; but she only got angry, and flung the ring at me, and told me to mind my own business. So I picked up the ring off the floor, and slunk off like a dog with his tail between his legs, and I've brought you back the ring. But it's the most mysterious thing to me. I can't make it out a bit. I'm as sure now as I can be sure of anything that it's the same ring I've often handled, and that it belongs to her. Her own ring is gone from her finger, and that and this are as like as two peas; but, for some reason or other, she won't have it to be hers, so I must just leave matters as I found them." "Thank you for your trouble," said Bradly, "and I'll keep the ring till the real owner turns up; and meanwhile, my friend, just take my advice, and keep as clear of the inside of the Green Dragon as you possibly can." When the railway clerk had left him, Thomas Bradly sat for some minutes in deep thought, and then sought his sister. "Dear Jane," he said, "there's just another step we're being guided; 'tain't a very broad one, but I believe it's in the right direction." He then gave her an account of what he had just heard from his visitor. "And what do you make of his story, Thomas?" she asked. "Do you think that the ring really belongs to Lydia Philips, and that she knows anything about the bag?"