e his chair as though patiently waiting,
he glanced up.

"Oh, beg pardon. You want this, I suppose?" and, handing her the dainty
teacup, he calmly slipped the ring into his waistcoat-pocket and
languidly murmured, "Thanks."

"Well, I like that."

"Yes? So do I, rather better than the others."

"May I ask what you purpose doing with my ring?"

"I was just thinking. I've ordered a new Amidon for Larkin, a new
ninety-dollar suit for Ferry, and I shall be decidedly poor this month,
even if we recover Merton's watch."

"Oh, well, if it's only to pawn one, why not take a diamond?"

"But it isn't."

"What then, pray?"

"Well, again I was just thinking--whether I could find another to match
this up in town, or send this one--to her."

"Mr. _Waring_! _Really?_" And now Mrs. Cram's bright eyes are dancing
with eagerness and delight.

For all answer, though his own eyes begin to moisten and swim, he draws
from an inner pocket a dainty letter, post-marked from a far, far city
to the northeast.

"You _dear_ fellow! How can I tell you how glad I am! I haven't dared
to ask you of her since we met at Washington, but--oh, my heart has been
just full of her since--since this trouble came."

"God bless the trouble! it was that that won her to me at last. I have
loved her ever since I first saw her--long years ago."

"Oh! _oh!_ OH! if Ned were only here! I'm wild to tell him. I may,
mayn't I?"

"Yes, the moment he comes."

But Ned brought a crowd with him when he got back from town a little
later. Reynolds was there, and Philippe Lascelles, and Mr. Pepper, and
they had a tale to tell that must needs be condensed.

They had all been present by invitation of the civil authorities at a
very dramatic affair during the late afternoon,--the final lifting of
the veil that hid from public view the "strange, eventful history" of
the Lascelles tragedy. Cram was the spokesman by common consent. "With
the exception of the Dawsons," said he, "none of the parties implicated
knew up to the hour of his or her examination that any one of the others
was to appear." Mrs. Dawson, eager to save her own pretty neck, had
told her story without reservation. Dawson knew nothing.

The story had been wrung from her piecemeal, but was finally told in
full, and in the presence of the officers and civilians indicated. She
had married in April, '65, to the scorn of her people, a young Yankee
officer attached to the commissary department. She had