The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

heading for the opening.
    There behind the paneling was a shallow closet which ran the full length of the five panels. It was filled with a collection of bags and small chests, a collection which appeared much larger when it lay in the gloom within than when they dragged it out. Then, when they had time to examine it carefully, they discovered that their booty consisted of two small wooden boxes or chests, one fancifully carved and evidently intended for jewels, the other plain but locked; a felt bag and another of canvas, and a package hurriedly done up in cloth. Rupert spread it all out on the floor.
    “Well,” he hesitated, “where shall we begin?”
    “Charity thought about how to open it, and it was her cat that found us the clue—let her choose,” Val suggested.
    “Good,” agreed Rupert. “And what’s your choice, m’lady?”
    “What woman could resist this?” She laid her hand upon the jewel box.
    “Then that it is.” He reached for it.
    It opened readily enough to show a shallow tray divided into compartments, all of them empty.
    “Sold again,” Val commented dryly.
    Carefully Rupert lifted out the top tray to disclose another on which rested three small leather bags. He loosened the draw-string of the nearest and shook out into his palm a pair of earrings of a quaint pattern in twisted gold set with dull red stones. Charity pronounced them garnets. Though they were not of great value, they were precious in Ricky’s eyes, and even Charity exclaimed over them.
    The second bag yielded a carnelian seal on a wide chain of gold mesh, the sort of ornament a dandy wore dangling from his watch pocket in the days of the Regency. And the third bag contained a cross of silver, blackened by time, set with amethysts. This was accompanied by a chain of the same dull metal.
    Putting these into the girls’ hands, Rupert lifted the second tray to lay bare the bottom of the chest. Here again were several small bags. There was another cross, this time of jet inlaid with gold and attached to a short necklace of jet beads; a wide bracelet of coral and turquoise which was crudely made and might have been native work of some sort. Then there was a tiny jewel-set bottle, about which, Ricky declared, there still lingered some faint trace of the fragrance it had once held. And most interesting to Charity was a fan, the sticks carved of ivory so intricately that they resembled lacework stiffened into slender ribs. The covering between them was fashioned of layers of silk painted with a scene of the bayou country, with the moss-grown oaks and encroaching swamp all carefully depicted.
    Charity declared that she had never seen its equal and that some great artist must have decorated the dainty trifle. She closed it carefully and slipped it back into its covering, and Rupert took out the last of the bags. From its depths rolled a ring.
    It was plain enough, a simple band of gold so deep in shade as to be almost red. Nearly an inch in width, there was no ornamentation of any sort on its broad, smooth surface.
    “Do you know what this is?” Rupert turned the circlet around in his fingers.
    “No.” Ricky was still dangling the earrings before her eyes.
    “It is the wedding-ring of the Bride of the Luck.”
    “What!” Val leaned forward to look down at the plain circle of gold.
    Even Ricky gave her brother her full attention now. Rupert turned to Charity.
    “You probably know the story of our Luck?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    “When the Luck was brought from Palestine, it was decided that it must be given into the hands of a guardian who would be responsible for it with his or her life. Because the men of the house were always at war during those troublesome times, the guardianship went to the eldest daughter if she were a maiden. By high and solemn ceremony she was married to the Luck in the chapel of Lorne. And she was the Bride of the Luck until death or a unanimous consent from the family released her. Nor could she marry a mortal husband during the time she wore this.” He touched the ring he held.
    “This must be very old. It’s the red gold which came into Ireland and England before the Romans conquered the land. Perhaps this was found in some old barrow on Lorne lands. But it no longer means anything without the Luck.”
    He held it out to Ricky. “By tradition this is yours.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t think I want that, Rupert. It’s too old—too strange. Now these,” she held up the