A Clergyman tells this Story.

Manawatu Herald, 25 July 1903, Page 3

A Clergyman tells this Story.

“ About the queerest fish story I know of,” said a highly truthful looking man—indeed he was a clergyman—” happened to me at a little lake where I used to summer with my family. One day my wife was out in a boat with a party of friends. She was letting her hand trail in tho water, without thinking of its shrinking effect, and when she finally • took her hand out her wedding ring was gone. The lake was deep at that point, and although we made considerable effort to recover the ring, it was not found.

Naturally it worried her a great deal, and the next year she would not go back to the same place. Nor did we the following year ; but the third year we went there again, and one day I was in the woods, about a mile from the lake, with my boy, trying to get a shot at some denizen of the forest or other. As we went peering round among the trees to get a squirrel we had seen, I noticed something shining on the twig of a tree about twenty-five feet from the grounds I sent my boy up after it, and when he came back I was v more than astonished to find that the shining thing was my wife’s wedding ting* . How it ever got there was a mystery at first, but I was not a believer jn fairies and that sort of thing, and I began to investigate for material causes. The top of the tree had deadened, and with a suspicion in my mind I sent my boy up to see what signs might be above the green houghs. He called down to me-presently that there were remains of a fish-hawk’s nest in the forks of the tree, and putting this and that together I came to the conclusion that the hawk had caught the fish that, bad gobbled my wife’s ring in the lake, and had taken it to the nest for the young hawks. They didn’t care for the jewellery and had left that part of the fish in the nest from which, as the nest was blown to pieces by the wind, and beaten by the storms the ring had dropped out, and by chance had caught on the twig where I found it. In any event if that is not the way it got there, how did it ? For it surely was there and my wife is wearing it to-day.”