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fell like a thick dew upon her heart while she walked there in the darkness.

Miriam had turned off the fountain but the basin was still brimmed with water and, when she came back to the house, she bent to peer at the goldfish, drowsing, it seemed, three motionless little shadows, among the reflected moon and stars. All would be well with Milly, Tilly and Lacey. Captain Ingpen had promised her and Robin that they should come to no harm and he was a man to be trusted. Robin trusted him. And, thinking now of Robin and of her friend, she turned away and her eye was drawn to a sharp, small glint of light lying on the ground; not a glow-worm at this season, too small, too bright for a glow-worm. She stooped and found Captain Ingpen’s ring half embedded in the sods and remembered how he had held the globe under the water with Robin. The ring must have slipped from his finger when he raised himself. She wiped the mud from it and put it on and went into the house, closing her hand upon it, for even for her middle finger it was too large, and to feel it thus recovered and protected warmed her kindliness towards the owner; it was like a piece of his life that she held. He would miss it, for it was a ring he cherished; he was not a man to wear a ring unless it had meaning for him