throat of the man in black, and then,
seeming to fancy that he had admitted altogether too much, he hastened
to say:

"The ring is valuable to me; but it is worth little to anybody else."

"I suppose that is because nobody else knows its secret?" came from
Snell.

"Secret! Bah! It has no secret!"

But it was not easy to convince Snell that this was the truth.

"Then why should you go to such extremes to get possession of a
wretched old thing of that sort?" demanded Wat.

"I have told you. The ring belonged to me--was stolen from me. It has
been in our family a great length of time, and was given me by my
father. I prize it highly for that reason. I do not know how it came
into the possession of this Merriwell family, and I cannot prove my
claim to my own property, so I must recover it in such a manner as is
possible. That is the truth."

Wat said nothing. Somehow he was doubtful, for it did not seem that
anybody who was sane could resort to such desperate expedients to
recover an ugly old ring that had no particular value save as an
heirloom.

As for Frank, he might have believed the strange man's story, but for
the fact that the man had told him something entirely different. One
story or the other might be true, but in any case the man in black was
a liar.

There was a brief silence, and then Snell asked:

"How am I to know that you will surely pay me seventy-five dollars for
the ring? You pounced upon me a few minutes ago as if you would rob me
of it if it had been in my possession."

"That was all through my eagerness and excitement," declared the man,
soothingly. "I meant you no harm, but I was very anxious."

"Well, I don't know; I am afraid I will be left when I get the ring and
hand it over, so I guess I'll----"

"What?"

Wat edged a little farther away.

"I guess I'll throw up the job," he hesitated.

"Do you still think you can find a way to get the ring?"

"Think so! I know I can get it, sooner or later, if I want to."

"Then look here, to prove that I am sincere I will pay you this much in
advance. It is a twenty-dollar gold piece. Now you cannot doubt my
earnestness and fairness in this matter. If you bring me the ring
within forty-eight hours, I'll pay you, besides this twenty, the
seventy-five dollars I offered in the first place."

Snell eagerly clutched the piece of money.

"You're a brick!" he cried. "And I'll lay myself out to get that ring.
I haven't begun t