Belle tucked her book under her arm and walked off.
"Now, Belle," protested her mother, "why can't you leave that book at home? Don't let me hear of your reading as you go along the street."
"I won't, but I like to carry it," answered Belle, patting it lovingly. She was deeply interested in the story, and begrudged the time it took to walk to the magician's. Once there, she decided she would stay awhile to rest and finish the chapter.
The day was warm, and she strolled along in lazy fashion. The Whittredge house as she passed looked deserted. The front shutters were closed, and no one was to be seen. Rosalind had gone away with her uncle for a few days. Belle amused herself by imagining that Rosalind's having been there at all was a dream, and she succeeded in producing a bewildering sense of unreality in her own mind.
Morgan was not in his shop, but that he had been there recently was evident, for his tools lay scattered about.
After the heat of the street the shop was cool and inviting, and a corner of an old sofa offered itself as a desirable spot in which to continue the story. It stood against the wall, and with several other pieces of furniture before it, was a secluded as well as a comfortable resting-place. Belle settled herself to her liking and was at once lost in her book. She finished the chapter and read another, and was beginning a third when something aroused her. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was, then with a finger in her book she peeped around the clock case, which with a high-backed chair screened her corner.
The magician stood in the middle of the room, with his back toward her, gazing intently at something in his hand. Belle was about to come out of her hiding-place when he stepped to the window, and holding the object up between his thumb and finger, let the sunlight fall upon it, laughing gleefully like a child over a toy.
Belle drew back quickly. Was she dreaming still? She pinched herself. No, she was awake, and in the magician's shop, and the thing she had seen in his hand was nothing less than Patricia's ring! She had heard it described too often not to recognize it. But how came it in Morgan's possession? She sat still and thought.
Meanwhile, after turning it over and over, and nodding and laughing to himself in a way that would have seemed rather crazy to one who did not know him, the magician disappeared into the back room, closing the door behind him. Belle seized the opportunity to steal from the shop. It would be easier to think out of doors.
The little brown and white house across the lane was keeping itself to-day. Miss Betty had gone to the city, and Sophy was at camp-meeting, as Belle happened to know, so she went over and sat on the porch step beside a large hydrangea. She must decide what to do. She remembered very distinctly the circumstances connected with the disappearance of the ring. Morgan had been one of the last persons to speak to old Mr. Gilpin before the attack of heart failure that ended his life, but no one had dreamed of suspecting him. Could he have had it all this time?