y,
half seriously.

"Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our
great-great-great-grandfather scuttled," her brother replied.

"Rupert," Ricky turned and asked impulsively, "do you really believe in
the Luck?"

Rupert looked up at the empty niche. "I don't know--No, I don't. Not the
way that Roderick and Richard and all the rest did. But something that
has seven hundred years of history behind it--that means a lot."

"'Then did he take up ye sword fashioned by ye devilish art of ye East
from two fine blades found in ye tomb,'" Val quoted from the record of
Brother Anselm, the friar who had accompanied Sir Roderick on his
crusading. "Do you suppose that that part's true? Could the Luck have
been made from two other swords found in an old tomb?"

"Not impossible. The Saracens were master metal workers. Look at the
Damascus blades."

"It all sounds like a fairy-tale," commented Ricky. "A sword with magic
powers beaten out of two other swords found in a tomb. And the whole
thing done under the direction of an Arab astrologer."

"You've got to admit," broke in Val, "that Sir Roderick had luck after
it was given to him. He came home a wealthy man and he died a Baron. And
his descendants even survived the Wars of the Roses when four-fifths of
the great English families were wiped out."

"'And fortune continued to smile,'" Rupert took up the story, "'until a
certain wild Miles Ralestone staked the Luck of his house on the turn of
a card--and lost.'"

"O-o-oh!" Ricky squirmed forward in her chair. "Now comes the pirate.
Tell us that, Rupert."

"You know the story by heart now," he objected.

"We never heard it here, where some of it really happened. Tell it,
please, Rupert!"

"In your second childhood?" he asked.

"Not out of my first yet," she answered promptly. "Pretty please,
Rupert."

"Miles Ralestone, Marquess of Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert
of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic.
And he even threw the family Luck across the gaming table."

"'The Luck went from him who did it no honor,'" Val repeated slowly. "I
read that in that old letter among your papers, Rupert."

"Yes, the Luck went from him. He survived Marston Moor; he survived the
death of his royal master, Charles the First, on the scaffold. He lived
long enough to witness the return of the Stuarts to England. But the
Luck was gone, and with it the good fortune of his line. Rupe