“Yes; it rolled along the floor, and may have fallen either off the finger of the person who put her hand in at the window, or from between the leaves of the Bible.”
“And have you mentioned about this ring to any one?”
“No, not even to my husband. I’m sure William will forgive me. It was just this way: I put it into my pocket at the time, and afterwards into a secret drawer in my desk, fearing it might bring one or both of us into trouble. When this happy change came, and both William and I began to care about the Bible, I told him how I came by the book, but thought I would wait before I said anything about the ring; perhaps something would come to clear up the mystery, and it would be time enough to produce the ring when some one came forward to claim it; but no one has done so yet.”
“And you have no suspicion at all who it belongs to, or who dropped it?”
“No, none whatever.”
“Well,” continued Bradly, “I don’t think it fell out of the leaves of the Bible, as not a word is said about it in John Hollands’ letter. I’m of opinion as it slipped off accidentally from the hand of the woman as she was dropping the Bible; and since it’s clear she didn’t want it to be known who she was, if she knows where she lost her ring she won’t want to come and claim it.”
“And do you think,” asked Foster, “that she is some one living in Crossbourne or the neighbourhood?”
“Pretty certain,” replied Thomas. “There’s been some roguery or trickery about it altogether. The bag was in Crossbourne on the 23rd of last December, and your wife got the Bible that same evening. I’m firmly persuaded there’s been some hoax about it all, and I believe bag and bracelet and all’s in the town, if we only knew how to find ’em without making the matter public. If we could only get at the owner of the ring without making a noise, we might find a clue as would lead us to where the bag is.”
“I’m much of your mind,” said Foster. “I fancy that some one of poor Jim Barnes’s drunken mates has been playing a trick off on him by watching him into the Railway Inn, and running off with the bag just to vex him; and then, when he found what was in the bag, he would hide all away except the Bible, for fear of getting into a scrape. But can anything be done about the ring?”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do if you’ll let me have it for a while,” said Bradly, with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ll get our Betsy to wear it in the mill to-morrow. You’ll see there’ll something come out of it, as sure as my name’s Thomas Bradly.”