here
at all was a dream, and she succeeded in producing a bewildering sense of
unreality in her own mind.

Morgan was not in his shop, but that he had been there recently was
evident, for his tools lay scattered about.

After the heat of the street the shop was cool and inviting, and a corner
of an old sofa offered itself as a desirable spot in which to continue the
story. It stood against the wall, and with several other pieces of
furniture before it, was a secluded as well as a comfortable
resting-place. Belle settled herself to her liking and was at once lost in
her book. She finished the chapter and read another, and was beginning a
third when something aroused her. For a moment she couldn't remember where
she was, then with a finger in her book she peeped around the clock case,
which with a high-backed chair screened her corner.

The magician stood in the middle of the room, with his back toward her,
gazing intently at something in his hand. Belle was about to come out of
her hiding-place when he stepped to the window, and holding the object up
between his thumb and finger, let the sunlight fall upon it, laughing
gleefully like a child over a toy.

Belle drew back quickly. Was she dreaming still? She pinched herself. No,
she was awake, and in the magician's shop, and the thing she had seen in
his hand was nothing less than Patricia's ring! She had heard it
described too often not to recognize it. But how came it in Morgan's
possession? She sat still and thought.

Meanwhile, after turning it over and over, and nodding and laughing to
himself in a way that would have seemed rather crazy to one who did not
know him, the magician disappeared into the back room, closing the door
behind him. Belle seized the opportunity to steal from the shop. It would
be easier to think out of doors.

The little brown and white house across the lane was keeping itself
to-day. Miss Betty had gone to the city, and Sophy was at camp-meeting, as
Belle happened to know, so she went over and sat on the porch step beside
a large hydrangea. She must decide what to do. She remembered very
distinctly the circumstances connected with the disappearance of the ring.
Morgan had been one of the last persons to speak to old Mr. Gilpin before
the attack of heart failure that ended his life, but no one had dreamed of
suspecting him. Could he have had it all this time?

Belle felt ashamed of herself for the thought. If there was an honest
person i