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."