'No! no, do not give it to Pierre! Pierre is eccentric. He loses things;
and such a pretty ring!'

'Cat!' said the old man, savagely. Suddenly the old woman said, rather
more loudly than was necessary:

'Wait! I shall tell you something about a ring.' There was something in
the sound of her voice that jarred upon me. Perhaps it was my
hyper-sensitiveness, wrought up as I was to such a pitch of nervous
excitement, but I seemed to think that she was not addressing me. As I
stole a glance round the place I saw the eyes I of the rats in the bone
heaps, but missed the eyes along the back. But even as I looked I saw
them again appear. The old woman's 'Wait!' had given me a respite from
attack, and the men had sunk back to their reclining posture.

'I once lost a ring--a beautiful diamond hoop that belonged to a queen,
and which was given to me by a farmer of the taxes, who afterwards cut
his throat because I sent him away. I thought it must have been stolen,
and taxed my people; but I could get no trace. The police came and
suggested that it had found its way to the drain. We descended--I in my
fine clothes, for I would not trust them with my beautiful ring! I know
more of the drains since then, and of rats, too! but I shall never
forget the horror of that place--alive with blazing eyes, a wall of them
just outside the light of our torches. Well, we got beneath my house. We
searched the outlet of the drain, and there in the filth found my ring,
and we came out.

'But we found something else also before we came! As we were coming
toward the opening a lot of sewer rats--human ones this time--came