"Is it something for us?" Katherine asked.
"Let Belle tell hers first. Mine must wait till we get to the oak tree."
"It is about the ring. I have found out how it came to be in the spinet," Belle announced.
"Really? How?"
"Lucy Brown, Aunt Milly's granddaughter, put it there," she began, all eagerness to tell her news. "Aunt Milly, you know, was Mr. Gilpin's cook, and Lucy had come in from the country to stay with her a few days, when he was taken ill. The morning he died she found the case with the ring in it under the library table, and she carried it into the drawing-room, where she was dusting, meaning to show it to her grandmother. Just as she had opened the spinet some one called to her to run for Dr. Fair, that Mr. Gilpin was dying, and in a great hurry she pushed the ring case under the strings and closed the lid and forgot all about it. She went home before anybody knew the ring was lost, and never thought of it again till she came to Friendship the other day and our Manda was telling her about the magician's finding it."
"I am almost sorry we know how it happened," said Rosalind. "I liked to think the magician had really broken the spell."
It was the last meeting of the Arden Foresters before Rosalind's departure, and in spite of the wintry day they decided it must be held under the oak tree; and little cared they for the weather as they rustled through the fallen leaves beneath the bare brown trees.
"I believe it is going to snow," said Jack, turning up his collar.
"If you'll stay we'll take you coasting down the Gilpin hill," Maurice added.
"I am afraid if I waited it wouldn't snow," Rosalind answered, laughing, "And now I have something to show you." They had reached the arbor, and sitting down she opened the box she carried.