"I should say so! If it were not, I shouldn't be making such a desperate struggle to get possession of it." The lad who was listening a short distance away, strained his ears to catch every word.
"There must be some secret about the ring ?" insinuated Snell.

"The gold in it amounts to little, and the old black stone----" A strange sound came from the throat of the man in black, and then, seeming to fancy that he had admitted altogether too much, he hastened to say: "The ring is valuable to me; but it is worth little to anybody else." "I suppose that is because nobody else knows its secret ?" came from Snell.
"Secret! Bah! It has no secret!" But it was not easy to convince Snell that this was the truth.
"Then why should you go to such extremes to get possession of a wretched old thing of that sort ?" demanded Wat.
"I have told you.

The ring belonged to me--was stolen from me.

It has been in our family a great length of time, and was given me by my father.

I prize it highly for that reason.