During the evening a half gale of wind sprang up.  While all was light and warmth inside, outside the wind howled harder and harder.  By the time that the music lovers began to pour out, the blast was furious.

Leaning on the arm of her escort, as her carriage drove up to the door, one beautifully gowned woman stepped out.  Over her hair was thrown a black, filmy scarf in which nestled a number of handsome diamonds.

Just as she reached the curb, but before she could step into the waiting carriage, this woman gave a shriek of dismay.

The gale had caught at her diamond-strewn head-covering.  Like a flash that costly creation was caught up from her hair and borne on the wind.

Others standing by saw the costly thing whisked obliquely up into the air.  It was still ascending on the blast when it passed out of the range of vision.

“O-o-o-oh!  My beautiful jeweled scarf!” sobbed the woman hysterically.  The crowd quickly formed about her.  She was recognized as Mrs. Macey, the wife of a wealthy real estate operator.

“It was careless not to have it fastened more securely, but it’s no use to cry over what can’t be helped now, my dear,” replied her husband.  “Get into the carriage and I’ll see if any trace can be found of the scarf.”

Still sobbing, Mrs. Macey was helped into the carriage.  Then Mr. Macey enlisted the help of the bystanders.

In every direction the street was searched.  The fronts of the buildings opposite were examined; the gratings in the sidewalk were peered through.  But there was no trace, anywhere, of the jeweled scarf.

“It will be worth two hundred and fifty dollars for anyone to find it and return it to me,” shouted Mr. Macey.  That scattered the searchers more widely still.  Presently a woman friend drove home with Mrs. Macey, while her husband remained to push the search.  He kept at it until two o’clock in the morning, half a hundred men and boys remaining in the search.

Then Mr. Macey gave it up.  The gaudy, foolish trifle was worth about five thousand dollars.  As the night wore on Mr. Macey began to have a pessimistic notion that perhaps some one had found the scarf but had been too “thrifty” to turn in such a precious article for so small a reward.

“I guess it may as well be given up,” sighed Mr. Macey, after two in the morning.  “I’m going home, anyway.”

The readers of “The Blade” that crisp October morning knew of Mrs. Macey’s loss.

There was much talk about the matter around the town.  People who walked downtown early that morning peered into gutters and down through sidewalk gratings.  Then, at about seven o’clock a sensation started, and swiftly grew.

One man, glancing skyward, had his attention attracted to something fluttering at the top of the spire of the Methodist church, more than half a block away from the opera house.  It was fabric of some sort, and one end fluttered in the breeze, though most of the black material appeared to be wrapped around the tip of the weather vane in which the spire staff terminated.