It's not fair to keep them waiting any longer. But no--first I must put
a ring on the Girl's finger--as I hoped to do long ago. You
remember--the ring of my bet, that almost made me lose you? I told you
about it, didn't I, on our day together, when I thought I should come
back in two weeks?"

"You told me you hoped not to lose a thing you wanted. You didn't say it
was a ring. But at Royalieu--the newspaper correspondents' chateau near
Compiegne--we came across a friend of yours, the one you made the bet
with----"

"Jack Curtis!"

"Yes. He told me about the ring. And he was sure you were alive."

"Good old Jack! Well, now I'm going to slip that magic ring on your
darling finger--the 'engaged' finger."

"But where is it?"

"The finger? Just now on the back of my neck, which it's making
throb--like a star!... Oh, the _ring_? That's in the hobby-horse which I
see over there, as large as life. At least, it's in him unless, unlike a
leopard, he's changed his spots."

Jim wouldn't let me go, but drew me with him, our arms interlaced, to
the tower end of the room where the hobby-horse he had once rescued from
fire endlessly pranced. "This used to be my bank, when I was a little
chap," he said. "Like a magpie, I always hid the things I valued most in
a hole I made under the third smudge to the left, on Spot Cash's breast.
'Spot Cash' is the old boy's name, you know! When I won the bet and took
the ring home, I had a fancy to keep it in this hidie hole, for luck,
till I could find the Girl. Mother knew. She was with me at the time.
But I was half ashamed of myself for my childishness, and asked her not
to tell--not even the Governor. I shouldn't wonder if that was why it
occurred to her to pack up my treasures for France. Maybe she had a
prophetic soul, and thought, if I found the Girl, I should want to lay
my hand on the ring. Here it is, safe and sound."

As he spoke, he had somehow contrived to extract a particularly black
smudge from the region of the hobby-horse's heart. It came out with a
block of wood underneath, and left a gap which gave Spot Cash the effect
of having suffered an operation. At the back of the cavity a second
hole, leading downward, had been burrowed in the softish wood; and in
this reposed a screwed-up wad of tissue paper. Jim hooked the tiny
packet out with a finger, opened the paper as casually as though it
enclosed a pebble, and brought to the light (which found and flashed to
the depths of