The Weird Picture

by John R. Carling

"No."

"Then where is it? I am looking hard, but I can't see it."

We all peered into the fountain. There was plenty of light for the purpose, and we could see the sandy bottom of the well quite clearly, but the ring was nowhere visible.

"Can't you see it?" said Daphne anxiously.

I hesitated to reply as I did not want to add to her alarm, but as she pressed me I said as carelessly as I could—

"I don't see it in the water. You must have thrown it on to the grass;" and I began to feel among the moss and verdure that fringed the stonework of the well.

"No, it fell into the water," Daphne said. "I heard the splash, and noticed the rings of water widening out before I looked up and saw—George! It must be there."

It was not to be found, however, either in the well or on the bordering grass, and we had to give up the search and make up our minds to go home without it. Language is but a feeble thing to express the surprise we all felt, and I could guess from the expression on Daphne's face something of her thoughts. In throwing away George's ring she had thrown away the pledge of her love for him, and from the mysterious manner in which it had disappeared it seemed almost as if the dead had accepted her renunciation.

I had long been familiar with the idea that at the point of death the disembodied spirit may appear to distant friends; and the thought now held me that the figure I had seen last Christmas amid the falling snow at Dover was the apparition of my brother, who had perhaps been seized with death in a manner secret and sudden. Could it be that, owing to some telepathic influence exerted on him by Daphne's mind, his spirit had been permitted to return to earth for a brief space to assure her of his death, and by vanishing with the ring that she was now free from her engagement to him? In the light of day and far from the scene of the event one may smile at this theory, but by that well in the ghostly moonlight, with Daphne's terror fresh on me, and the ring gone, it seemed quite in harmony with the circumstances. The eerie sensation that had been creeping over my uncle and myself since we had taken our station by the haunted well deepened now to an indescribable intensity.