“I looked in once and he was gone,” she answered, “but it was for such a little while that I never thought of it again. Oh, if we should find what is lost, at last!”
David was already on his feet, peering over the stone wall toward the pool.
“We should try to get Michael home first,” Betsey objected, seeing already what was in his mind.
“No, no,” the Irishman insisted, having only a vague notion of what they were about, but feeling excitement in the air. “You shall not move me one inch if there is aught to do first that may help Miss Miranda.”
“You must lie very still,” warned Betsey.
“Indeed and I will,” promised Michael obediently, “but—what is it you are going to do, you two?”
They did not stop to explain, so great was their haste. They went clambering over the wall again, and tumbled down the other side upon the grass. The wind, from which they had been sheltered below, caught them again as they ran to the pool. They knelt down at opposite sides of the shallow curve and plunged their arms, shoulder deep, into the tossing water.
“I have found something,” exclaimed Betsey almost immediately; “it feels like thin metal blades set in a ring.”
She drew her prize, dripping, from the basin and held it up. As she sat back on her heels the wind loosened her hair and flung its dark mass over her shoulder. David, unable to see, took the object in his hand and felt of it carefully.
“That is certainly the missing valve,” he pronounced, “so we know now that we are right. The other parts were two steel tubes, about as long as my hand. Those will not be so easy to find. They may have rolled away to the deep end.”