“Nothing,” said she: “his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them; at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back.”
As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the trunk.
“I know all these things,” she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her eyes.
“This?” I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three little rings dangling from it.
“No; why, what is that?”
“It looks like a puzzle of some kind.”
“Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in Philadelphia.”
Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
“It is more than ordinarily complicated,” I observed, moving the rings up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
“The better he would like it,” said she.