Homeless beggar's honesty rewarded

Homeless man Billy Ray Harris returns a diamond and platinum engagement ring to Sarah Darling in Kansas City. Photo / AP

A homeless man will soon have well over US$100,000 (NZ$119,000) after returning an engagement ring to a woman who accidentally dropped it in his cup.

Sarah Darling's fiance set up a website seeking donations for Billy Ray Harris, who begs on Kansas City's Country Club Plaza.

By yesterday, more than 6000 people had donated more than US$145,000. Harris discovered the ring about an hour after Darling dumped spare change from her purse into his cup.

She had taken off her ring earlier that day and put it with the coins.

"The ring was so big that I knew if it was real, it was expensive," Harris told KCTV.

Darling went back to Harris and told him that she might have given him something valuable.

"Was it a ring?" he asked her.

He said his clergyman grandfather had raised him from six months old "and thank the good Lord ... I do still have some character".