But it was Eliza, dishevelled,
breathless, her hair coming down, her collar crooked, her dress
twisted and disordered, who suddenly held out a hand a hand that
they could see; and in the hand, plainly visible in the moonlight,
the dark circle of the magic ring.
"Alf a mo!" said Eliza's gentleman friend next morning. He was
waiting for her when she opened the door with pail and
hearthstone in her hand. "Sorry you couldn't come out yesterday."
"So'm I." Eliza swept the wet flannel along the top step. "What did
you do?"
"I 'ad a bit of a headache," said the gentleman friend. "I laid down
most of the afternoon. What were you up to?"
"Oh, nothing pertickler," said Eliza.
"Then it was all a dream, she said, when he was gone; "but it'll be
a lesson to me not to meddle with anybody's old ring again in a
hurry."
"So they didn't tell 'er about me behaving like I did," said he as he
went "sun, I suppose like our Army in India. I hope I ain't going to
be liable to it, that's all!"
Johnson was the hero of the hour. It was he who had tracked the
burglars, laid his plans, and recovered the lost silver. He had not
thrown the stone public opinion decided that Mabel and her aunt
must have been mistaken in supposing that there was a stone at all.
But he did not deny the warning letter. It was Gerald who went out
after breakfast to buy the newspaper, and who read aloud to the
others the two columns of fiction which were the Liddlesby
Observer's report of the facts.
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