Chapter XV: A Band of Gold

“What is it?” asked Peter as Judy held the object in her closed hand.

She smiled at him. “You’ll have to guess, but I’ll give you a hint. It’s something I don’t need. I already have one, and I love it dearly. You gave it to me.”

“I gave you Blackberry.”

“I know. This is the thing he was rolling around in there.”

“A spool of thread?”

“Oh, no! This is something much more exciting. I know a song about it. We have it on an old record.”

And Judy began to sing:

“Love’s not a sudden romance
Or the kiss that follows a dance.
Love is forever, an everlasting thing.
Love is....”

“A golden ring.” Peter finished the line as Judy opened her hand.

There it was—a plain band of gold. It was not engraved on the outside as Judy’s ring was. She had once told Peter that the leaves engraved on her wedding ring looked like little _y’s_. “They all stand for _you_,” she had whispered after he had placed the ring on her finger.

This ring, Judy soon discovered, had never been placed on anyone’s finger. The engraving on the inside told the story.

“Peter! There are some initials there!” Judy exclaimed, noticing them first. “Can you see what they are?”

He held the ring in a better light.

“‘G. A. to M. H.,’” he read.

“But that’s George Anderson to Meta Hanley!” Judy exclaimed. “He did buy her the ring. He really did intend to marry her. But then I guess he met this other girl, and love didn’t turn out to be such an everlasting thing for him. Meta ought to know about the ring, though. Shall we take it to her?”

“Not so fast, Angel. That ring isn’t all we’ve discovered,” declared Peter. “Don’t you think, before we deliver the ring, we ought to find out what else is in this house and how it came to be here?”

“You mean—Oh dear!” Judy interrupted herself, knowing too well what Peter meant. “You mean Danny’s father may have been hiding all that loot from the Roulsville flood in his boarded-up house. If the beavers hadn’t broken in—Oh dear!” Judy said again. “I almost wish they hadn’t. It spoils that beautiful romance I was dreaming up for Meta Hanley. She won’t want to marry a thief. She won’t even want this ring.”

“She may. If she really loved him she may want to marry him, anyway, and Danny does need a mother—”

“But his father will be in jail!”

Peter laughed. “We have to find him before we can put him there, or marry him off, either. I think Danny knew the beavers were hauling stuff away from the house where he used to live.”

“Oh dear! Then he knew his father stole it?”

“Are all those _oh dears_ for Danny? I feel sorry for the boy myself,” Peter admitted. “But perhaps his father allowed the stuff to be stored in his house without knowing it was stolen.”

“I doubt it. He can’t be much good,” declared Judy. “He did leave his boy at the orphanage.”

“Angel,” Peter replied in that calm voice he used when he was begging Judy to be reasonable, “you can’t blame him for that, can you? He may have known Meta Hanley was the matron and that she would be a second mother to Danny. He must be in these woods somewhere.”

They had been walking toward the beaver dam while they were talking. Judy glanced back along the road they had taken.

“Blackberry isn’t coming,” she observed. “I thought surely he’d follow us if we started walking.”

“He’s still exploring that house. We’ll stop and call him again on our way back to the car,” Peter promised. “Meanwhile we may surprise the beavers and get a few good pictures.”

Judy had her camera with her, but she had lost interest in the beavers. “We won’t find them gnawing down trees,” she said. “They find it easier to haul broken pieces of furniture through that hole they gnawed in the house. If Danny knows the furniture is there,” she went on thoughtfully, “then I’m sure he must know it’s stolen. Probably it’s being sold, little by little, by unscrupulous men like Mr. Sammis. It’s funny, though, Sammis did tell that truck driver to take the furniture back.”

“What furniture?” asked Peter, suddenly interested.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m not sure it was furniture, but just as we were leaving that second-hand shop a truck drove up. It had the name JOHN BEER lettered on it.”

“Did you see the license plates?”

“Yes, they were New York plates,” Judy replied. “John Beer was trying to sell Sammis some furniture. I thought at first it might be display cases or something he’d made, because it said on the truck that he was a carpenter. But now I remember hearing him say, ‘This is good furniture. I’ve sanded and refinished everything—’”

“And the truck came from New York State?”

“It must have.” Judy began to see the importance of what she had just told Peter. If stolen goods had been transported across state lines it would be his duty, not only to report it, but to act upon his report.

“I’ll drive to the nearest telephone and be right back,” he promised. “You wait for me at the beaver dam. If you see Danny maybe you can get him to talk. Keep this picture and show it to him.”

“The ‘ghost picture’!” Judy exclaimed as Peter handed it to her. “What do you want me to do, scare him to death?”

Peter laughed. “It may give him a jolt. But you can explain the lady’s face—”

“A lot easier than I can explain some other things,” Judy finished.

She didn’t think of the woods as being lonely until Peter was gone. The beaver dam, robbed of its lady, was nothing but a mass of mud and sticks. Ripples on the surface of the pond told her the beavers were there. They hadn’t dragged out any more furniture to repair their dam. They had moved a stone. Or had someone moved it for them?

Suddenly Judy became uneasy. She had been keeping perfectly still with her camera focused on the pond. Now she whirled around with it as something moved in the bushes behind her.

“It’s only a beaver,” she said to herself, relief flooding over her. She had imagined the man in the “ghost picture” stealing stealthily through the woods. But that was silly. Peter wouldn’t have left her if there had been any danger. Without moving from where she stood, she began to take pictures.

Soon two more beavers appeared carrying poles. A crash in the woods off to her right told her that another sapling had fallen. If beavers worked only at night, these animals were breaking the rules. Judy watched them for half an hour and then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the beavers vanished. Something had startled them. Was it Blackberry?

“Here, kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” Judy began to call.

“Quiet!” a voice hissed from the tree overhead.

Judy looked up to see Danny looking more like a wood sprite than ever in his green jacket. His eyes pierced through her as if they were accusing her of invading his private world.

“I was only calling my cat,” she started to explain.

“He won’t come.” Danny declared.

“Why not?” Judy wanted to know.

“Because I trapped him. That’s why. I’ll trap anything or anybody who goes in that house without my father’s permission,” declared Danny. “I plugged up the hole and trapped him. That’s what I did.”

“That’s cruel!” cried Judy. “He’s only a cat. I’m going right back there this minute and let him out.”

“No, you’re not!” Danny sprang down from the tree and seized her arm, but not before she found the “ghost picture” and held it before his face. She didn’t care if she did give him a jolt. All her sympathy on him had been wasted.

“He’s a vicious little monster,” she thought. “He deserves to be frightened.”

She was not prepared for the quick change of expression or the sudden loosening of his grasp on her arm. He snatched the picture and held it in a patch of sunlight.

“You got him!” he exclaimed. “Or is it a her? You got that man I was following, and he has a lady’s face.”

“Don’t you recognize the face?” Judy asked quietly.

“It’s the face that was on that lady stick. Somebody did steal it,” the boy charged. “If you and your brother hadn’t taken me back to the orphanage I could have watched the beaver dam. Then it wouldn’t have been broken.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Judy said, meaning it. “You know my brother didn’t take it.”

“Then who did?” Danny retorted.

“Don’t you know?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it was that guy in the picture. I’m going to tell my father—”

“Look closely, Danny,” Judy interrupted. “I took one picture on top of another. Isn’t that your father in the second picture?”