The young man threw back his head and laughed—a big, reassuring laugh which brought some colour into the three pale and anxious faces turned up to his. "Blood! I see! No, it was not so bad as all that, it only might have been. It was not blood, it was only—but I'd better begin at the beginning and tell you what happened. I was sitting in Macgregor's Burnt Oak field, working at—well, a little experiment I am interested in, when I saw the balloon had come right over. Of course I had been watching it, but for a bit I was absorbed in my experiment and had not looked up. I looked up then and was staring hard, when suddenly, before I could say Jack Robinson, a whacking stone came hurtling down and cleared my head by less than a foot. If it had hit me—by Jove! I'd have tried the last and biggest experiment before this!"
"A foot is a pretty good miss," said Jerry, a look of immense relief spreading over his face. "I know a chap who had a parting cut in his hair with a bullet; that's what I call a narrow shave. That's what he calls it too," Jerry added, with a grin.
"No doubt he does. My shave was narrow enough for me, thank you. It all but knocked my precious experiment into the middle of next week. But what I want to know is why Hugh Campbell throws diamond rings about the country. If the stone hadn't plopped into the middle of my—my little game—which was almost another miracle when you consider the size of the field—the ring would have been lost for ever."
"It's a miraculous ring," Grizzel explained, "and it brings luck. I expect you'll be ever so lucky now. But how did you know where to look for Hugh?" she added rather anxiously. Mr. Ferguson would not be pleased, to put it mildly, if he knew how nearly Hugh had involved him in a tragedy.
"I know your father," the young man replied, "he once did me a good turn. So I knew where to look for the owner of the handkerchief without troubling Mr. Ferguson."
"But what was that mush if it wasn't blood?" asked Jerry.
"That? Oh—that was merely my little experiment; that is my secret for the present, and I trust you not to mention it. But no one has told me why your brother chucked a diamond ring out of the balloon."
"It was a mistake; he was trying experiments too," Grizzel explained. "But, please, may I go and tell him that he isn't a murderer? He is expecting to be hanged every minute, and it makes him feel perfectly miserable. But I was sure that my ring would bring him luck."
Grizzel sped off on her mission. She knocked at the dark-room door.
"Please put an ear at the keyhole—I have important news."
An ear was promptly at her disposal. She did not ask whose, but went on: