"Well," remarked Mr. Hink jocularly, after looking at the date of the paper and seeing that it was that day's, "you may be in time yet. I should go and have a look for that twenty quid if I were you."
The shabby man made no reply, but folding the paper looked away into the distance with a somewhat cryptic expression that roused Mr. Hink's curiosity all the more. What did it mean—the question put to him, the clean new paper in the hands of a tramp, and that quiet, half-amused little smile?
"Look here," he said sharply; "what are you driving at? You haven't—you don't mean to say that you've found it?"
"Governor," replied the man with simple candour, "whether I've found it or not I don't know, but I've found something. I shall have to trust someone, and it may as well be you." With these words he took a dirty screw of paper out of a pocket, and unwrapping it placed a marquise ring of dazzling brilliance in Mr. Hink's hand.
"Of course it's it," said that gentleman after a single glance. "Any cuckoo could see that. Look here; ten diamonds, there they are; twelve rubies, pearl centre."
"So they are, governor, if you say so," said the tramp, replacing the ring in its covering and returning it to his pocket. "But strike me clean if I could tell a ruby from a radish."
"Well," said Mr. Hink enviously, "you are in luck! My godfathers, but you are!"
The man in luck favoured him with a half-bitter, half-pitying smile. "So it seems," he replied; "but when I
