aken place up the
road, as Lucetta's denouncing finger plainly indicated, then this token
of Mother Jane's complicity in it had been carried across the
intervening space by other means than Mother Jane herself. In other
words, it was brought to her by the perpetrator, or it was placed where
she could lay hand on it; neither supposition implying guilt on her
part, she being in all probability as innocent of wrong as she was of
sense. At all events, such should be my theory for the nonce, old
theories having exploded or become of little avail in the present aspect
of things. To discover, then, the source of crime, I must discover the
means by which this ring reached Mother Jane--an almost hopeless task,
but not to be despaired of on that account: had I not wrung the truth in
times gone by from that piece of obstinate stolidity the Van Burnam
scrub-woman? and if I could do this, might I not hope to win an equal
confidence from this half-demented creature, with a heart so passionate
it beat to but one tune, her Lizzie? I meant at least to try, and, under
the impulse of this resolve, I left my position at the gate and
recrossed the road to Mother Jane, whose figure I could dimly discern on
the farther side of her little house.

Mr. Gryce barely looked up as I passed him, and the men not at all. They
were deep in their work, and probably did not see me. Neither did Mother
Jane at first. She had not yet wearied of the shining gold she held,
though she had begun again upon that chanting of numbers the secret of
which Mr. Gryce had discovered in his investigation of her house.

I therefore found it hard to make her hear me when I attempted to speak.
She had fixed upon the new number fifteen and seemed never to tire of
repeating it. At last I took cue from her speech, and shouted out the
word _ten_. It was the number of the vegetable in which Mr. Chittenden's
ring had been hidden, and it made her start violently.

"Ten! ten!" I reiterated, catching her eye. "He who brought it has
carried it away; come into the house and look."

It was a desperate attempt. I felt myself quake inwardly as I realized
how near Mr. Gryce was standing, and what his anger would be if he
surprised me at this move after he had cried "Halt!"

But neither my own perturbation nor the thought of his possible anger
could restrain the spirit of investigation which had returned to me with
the above words; and when I saw that they had not fallen upon deaf ear