Lady Carleton came forward and put her hand into the hole.
“It’s like a bran pie!” she said, with a nervous little laugh. “But yes—here is a prize!” Out came something, discoloured and tarnished, but a gold bracelet; then something else, which, as the dust was shaken off and the light fell on it, flashed and dazzled—a diamond star, rings, brooches, everything. The lost jewels were found at last!
“Begging your pardon, gentlemen,” said Harry Whittaker, “I can’t understand now how they came to be hidden so completely.”
“It is clear enough at last,” said Sir Philip.
“Lady Carleton, as she wishes every one fully to know, hid the box in which she had put the jewels among the ferns on the rockery. Lennox, who had left the place the week before, came back on the sly to see his sweetheart, and, according to his statement to you, stole the jewels, threw the box into the pond, and put the jewels for security into that great hole, just within a man’s reach. You explained why he never came back for them, and if he had I don’t see how he would have got them out, for of course they slipped through the smaller hole in the bottom of the visible hollow, of which he was not aware. Wyn Warren stopped that hole up to make a nesting-place for the squirrels, little thinking what he was burying away. He did his work so cleverly that the other day, when his father inspected this great shallow hole, he never thought of the cave beneath.
“And now this great discovery has been made by so strange a set of accidents that they must be called Providential: the losing of the letter, my little girl picking it up and this young woman finding it, which, I suppose, led to her knowing of the search for the jewels; Wyn’s good-nature in getting Lily the honeysuckle; your offer of the wild-flower prize—all these trifles have worked in to clear up a most unhappy perplexity. And, Mr Henry Whittaker, I beg to congratulate you.”
“And I,” said Mr Cunningham, holding out his hand to Harry, “to apologise for having misjudged you.”
Harry touched his hat first and then took the extended hand.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s very handsome of you to say so; but, under the circumstances, I should certainly have suspected myself.”
“You will all come in to Ravenshurst and get some supper, and look at the jewels in a better light?” said Sir Philip.