“A brass ring! Oh yes!” replied Caspar; “now I do remember. In the Botanic Gardens there was an adjutant with a ring round its ankle; a brass ring, too—just like this one. How very odd!”
“Like!” echoed Karl. “Not only like, but the very same! Stoop down, and examine it more closely. You see those letters?”
“R.B.G., Calcutta,” slowly pronounced Caspar, as he read the inscription graven upon the ring. “‘R.B.G.’ What do these initials stand for, I wonder?”
“It is not difficult to tell that,” knowingly answered Karl. “Royal Botanical Garden! What else could it be?”
“Nothing else. For certain, these two birds must be the same we used to see there, and with which we so often amused ourselves!”
“The same,” asserted Karl. “No doubt of it.”
“And Fritz must have recognised them too—when he made that unprovoked attack upon them! You remember how he used to quarrel with them?”
“I do. He must not be permitted to assail them any more. I have a use for them.”
“A use?”
“Ah, a most important one; so important that these birds, ugly and unamiable as they are, must be cared for, as if they were the prettiest and most prized of pets. We must provide them with food and water; we must tend them by day, and watch over them by night—as though they were some sacred fire, which it was our duty to keep constantly burning.”