said that her husband was a sailor
captain, but her description of him was not that of my friend. The
other said her husband had been a lawyer, so of course _he_ could not be
the man of whom I was in search."

"But, sir," said Mrs Tipps, in some perplexity, "if you are to depend
on description, I fear that you will never attain your end, for every
one knows that descriptions given of the same person by different people
never quite agree."

"That is true, madam; and the description given to me this evening of
your late husband is a case in point; for, although it agrees in many
things--in most things--there is some discrepancy. Did your husband
never give you the slightest hint about a set of diamonds that he had
once lost?"

"Never; but I can account for that by the fact, that he never alluded to
anything that had at any time given him pain or displeasure, if he could
avoid it."

"There is but the one clue, then, that I spoke of, namely, the ring that
belonged to the set of diamonds. Did your husband ever possess--"

"The ring!" exclaimed Mrs Tipps and Netta in the same breath. "Yes, he
had a diamond ring--"

They stopped abruptly, and looked at each other in distress, for they
remembered that the ring had been lost.

"Pray, what sort of ring is it? Describe it to me," said Dr Noble.

Netta carefully described it and, as she did so, the visitor's
countenance brightened.

"That's it; that's it exactly; that _must_ be it for I remember it well,
and it corresponds in all respects with--my dear ladies, let me see the
ring without delay."

"Alas! sir," said Mrs Tipps, sadly, "the ring is lost!"

A look of blank dismay clouded poor Dr Noble's visage as he heard these
words, but he quickly questioned the ladies as to the loss, and became
more hopeful on bearing the details.

"Come," he said at last, as he rose to take leave, "things don't look
quite so bad as they did at first. From all I have heard I am convinced
that my friend's widow and daughter are before me--a sight of the ring
would put the question beyond all doubt. We must therefore set to work
at once and bend all our energies to the one great point of recovering
the lost ring."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

A RUN-AWAY LOCOMOTIVE.

Being, as we have had occasion to remark before, a communicative and
confiding little woman, Netta Tipps told the secret of the ring in
strict confidence to her old nurse. Mrs Durby, in a weak moment as on
a former o