"Nan, it's a letter from Rhoda," Bess repeated the information twice before she got any response at all, and then it was only a grunt. It was the morning after the famous mule-back excursion, and Nan was in her room alone until Bess's entrance.

"Whatever are you doing?" Bess asked when she saw that Nan, strangely enough, didn't seem to be interested in her bit of information.

"Oh, Bess, I can't find it anyplace," Nan looked as though the world had come to an end. She had all that she could do to keep from crying.

"Find what?"

"Oh, my ring. You know the one I mean, the one old Mr. Blake gave me in Scotland last summer. He said it was a family heirloom and that I should keep it as long as I lived and then see that it was pa.s.sed on down to my children. Now, it's gone and I'm sure I left it in this room when we went away yesterday."

"Are you sure, Nan?" Bess looked worried too, now. The ring was a lovely thing with the bluest of blue sapphires in an old-fashioned gold setting. Bess had coveted it herself, and often wanted to wear it. But she respected Nan's sentiment about the bit of jewelry enough to have not even asked to try it on.

Now it was gone!

"When did you wear it last?"

"Bess, I had it on yesterday morning before we went on that trip by muleback and I took it off because I was afraid I would lose it. I left it in this box I'm sure, and it isn't here now. I've looked through it a dozen times." As she finished, she proffered the box to Bess, who took it, opened it up, and carefully looked through the trinkets contained therein. The ring wasn't there.

"Have you told anybody, yet?" Bess questioned.

"No, but if it doesn't come to light pretty soon, I'm going to tell cousin Adair. I'm almost afraid to do that, because he values the ring almost as much as I. He saw it once, he said, when he was in Scotland, and he was proud to think that it came to me. Now I've lost it, and I'm sure he'll think that I've been very careless."

"It doesn't matter what he thinks," Bess said firmly. "You'd better tell him right away. If someone has stolen it, he's the only one that can find the culprit. Come on, let's go downstairs now. Or do you want me to hunt first?"

"Yes, do that." Nan did dread telling Adair MacKenzie of her loss.

Bess looked thoroughly, but nowhere could she find the ring.

So together, the two girls went down the stairs, Bess this time in the role of comforter.

They found Adair out in the gardens talking as best he could with an old gardener who knew at least a few words of English. Adair looked up at their entrance.

"So you like flowers, too," he greeted them. Nan nodded her head, and then couldn't say anything for a few minutes.

"Why, what's the matter, Nancy child," Adair was all sympathy as he noted the worried look on the girl's face. "Nothing serious, I hope."

"I'm afraid it is," Nan answered. "You know my ring--"

"The sapphire ring that you brought home from Scotland?" Adair said.

"Yes," Nan nodded her head to indicate that he was right. "It's missing."

"What do you mean, missing?" Adair asked. "Have you lost it?"

"No, it was in my room, and it's gone now." Nan said this very positively.

"Gone, gone where?" Adair flared up as usual.

"That's what I don't know," Nan was having a difficult time being patient. "I wish I did."

"You think it's stolen." Adair now had the girls by the arm and was taking them back to the hacienda.

"I don't like to say that," Nan hedged.

"If that's what happened, speak up." Adair wanted to get to the bottom of this right away and although he was very fond of Nan he wasn't going to spare her or her feelings any now. The ring, he felt, was a personal loss to him too and as he went into the house, he was determined to find it.

First he quizzed all the girls to find out, if by chance, they knew of anything that would indicate that Nan was mistaken. They didn't. No one had seen her wearing it after the time at which she said she had put it away.

Then he quizzed all of the upstairs' servants. This was done with Walker's help, since he was the only one in the crowd that knew any Spanish at all. Again, there was no light cast on the mystery.

He called in all the rest of the house servants, with no results. Then he bl.u.s.tered and fumed and threatened, but this to no avail.

Finally, with one last grand threat that he would find out who the culprit was in spite of everybody, he sent everyone from the room.

The girls went up to their quarters together.

"Now, who do you suppose could have done anything like that?" Bess wondered as they all sat around listlessly and hopelessly, for there was nothing that they could do. "Do you suspect anyone, Nan?"

"No one in this whole wide world." Nan answered wholeheartedly. "The servants since we have been here have all been just as nice as they could be. I don't think there is a one of them that would stoop to anything like that."

"It doesn't seem possible," soft-spoken Grace agreed, "but then someone has taken it. We're sure of that."

"As sure as we are of anything," Nan said.

"Is it very valuable, Nan?" Amelia asked.

"Oh, I don't know that," Nan answered. "I think, however, that the value is mostly sentimental. It was originally given to one of the Blakes as a reward by the king. It was supposed then to have the power to bring the king's soldiers to the help of the person wearing it, in whatever trouble he might be.

"There is a story that once, someone who owned it committed treason and was about to be beheaded when he brought forth the ring. It saved him, even then, and instead of killing him they banished him to another country for ten years. Ordinarily, it would have been death or a life banishment, but the ring's power was mighty."

"Maybe then," Laura suggested, "if you or your cousin will offer a reward, the ring will turn up. The person that stole it probably thought that it was valuable."

"I thought of that," Nan answered, "but cousin Adair says 'no,' that he will get the ring back without any such monkey business. So I guess we'll just have to leave it up to him."

CHAPTER XXV

BESS HAS SUSPICIONS

They did leave it up to Adair MacKenzie, and for several days nothing happened. The house was like a morgue, for everyone suspected everyone else and the servants were all under suspicion.

Finally, Nan couldn't stand it any longer, and decided to do a little investigating on her own. It was Bess who put her on the track.

"I don't trust Chinamen," Bess had confided and then felt foolish immediately afterward, for if there was one thing that Nan resented above all others, it was race prejudice in any form.

"Oh, Bess, don't be silly," Nan dismissed the statement shortly.