"One of the servants saw Linda down there with some rope. She was taken sick and went home for a while, and did not know anything about the trouble at the school. But she is well now and ready to go back to her work, and in talking to Doctor Beulah the story came out."
"I'm mighty glad Doctor Beulah knows," said Bess. "I don't suppose any of us could have told on Linda, but she deserved to be found out—the horrid thing."
"I don't suppose Linda can help her disposition," said Grace mildly. "I heard mother say once that she was her own worst enemy."
"I suppose she is," said Rhoda skeptically. "But that doesn't make us like her any better!"
Then Nan put down Laura's letter and turned to Momsey's. It was a long, long letter, and she read it over twice.
"Dear Momsey!" she murmured to herself. "How much I will have to tell you when I see you again!"
A few hours later Mr. Mason came back with the news that Jacob Pacomb had been arrested for the crooked swindler that he was.
It seemed that at the time he had sold the property to Mrs. Bragley's husband, Pacomb had made five other grants, and, now that the property had proved more valuable than he had hoped for, he was trying underhand means to recover it.
The men who had made life miserable for Nan for the last few weeks and had almost wrecked Bess's temper and who were now gracing twin cells in prison, were simply agents of Pacomb's.
"So now everything is settled happily," Mr. Mason finished. "We can go back to Palm Beach whenever the spirit moves us."