He called in all the rest of the house servants, with no results. Then he blustered and fumed and threatened, but this to no avail.
Finally, with one last grand threat that he would find out who the culprit was in spite of everybody, he sent everyone from the room.
The girls went up to their quarters together.
“Now, who do you suppose could have done anything like that?” Bess wondered as they all sat around listlessly and hopelessly, for there was nothing that they could do. “Do you suspect anyone, Nan?”
“No one in this whole wide world.” Nan answered wholeheartedly. “The servants since we have been here have all been just as nice as they could be. I don’t think there is a one of them that would stoop to anything like that.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” soft-spoken Grace agreed, “but then someone has taken it. We’re sure of that.”
“As sure as we are of anything,” Nan said.
“Is it very valuable, Nan?” Amelia asked.
“Oh, I don’t know that,” Nan answered. “I think, however, that the value is mostly sentimental. It was originally given to one of the Blakes as a reward by the king. It was supposed then to have the power to bring the king’s soldiers to the help of the person wearing it, in whatever trouble he might be.
“There is a story that once, someone who owned it committed treason and was about to be beheaded when he brought forth the ring. It saved him, even then, and instead of killing him they banished him to another country for ten years. Ordinarily, it would have been death or a life banishment, but the ring’s power was mighty.”