that she could scarcely hold these objects, picked them up and examined them—the ring first.
It very evidently was, as she had immediately thought, a wedding ring once fitted for a finger only a trifle less slender than her own. One side of the gold band was very much worn, not with the sort of wear which a ring gets on a hand, but by some different sort of abrasion. The other side of the band was roughened and pitted but not so much worn; the inside still bore the traces of an inscription. "As long as we bo . . . all live," Constance could read, and the date "June 2, 1891."
It was in January, 1896, Constance remembered, that Alan Conrad had been brought to the people in Kansas; he then was "about three years old." If this wedding ring was his mother's, the date would be about right; it was a date probably something more than a year before Alan was born. Constance put down the ring and picked up the watch. Wherever it had lain, it had been less protected than the ring; the covers of the case had been almost eroded away, and whatever initialing or other marks there might have been upon the outside were gone. But it was like Uncle Benny's watch—or like one of his watches. He had several, she knew, presented to him at various times—watches almost always were the testimonials given to seamen for acts of sacrifice and bravery. She remembered finding some of those testimonials in a drawer at his house once where she was rummaging, when she was a child. One of them had been a watch just like this, large and heavy. The spring which operated the cover would not work, but Constance forced the cover open.
There, inside the cover as she had thought it would
