"That would be great!" cried Tom.
"But I don't know," continued Ruth, reflectively. "We would better not touch it. I wouldn't undertake to advise Jerry what to do if he found it. But this is what they call 'treasure trove,' I guess. At least, it was what that Rufus Blent had in mind, all right, when he sold Mr. Tingley the island with the peculiar reservation clause in the deed."
CHAPTER XXIV
A MIDNIGHT MARAUDER
Meanwhile the boys and girls left behind in Jerry Sheming's old camp began to find the absence of Ruth and her two companions rather trying. The time which had elapsed since the three explorers started to find the eastern outlet of the cave seemed much longer to those around the campfire than to the trio themselves.
Before the searching party could have reached the brookside, had the tunnel been perfectly straight, the nervous Belle Tingley wanted to send out a relief expedition.
"We never should have allowed Ruthie to go," she wailed. "We all should have kept together. How do we know but they'll find the cave a regular labyrinth, and get lost in it, and wander around and around, and never find their way out, or back, and——"
"Oh, for the goodness sake!" ejaculated Mary Cox, "don't be such a weeping, wailing Sister of Misery, Belle! You not only cross bridges before you come to them, but, I declare, you build new ones!"
"She's Old Man Trouble's favorite daughter," said Heavy. "Didn't you know that? Now, Miss Fuss-Budget, stop croaking. Nothing's going to happen to Ruthie."