“Maybe he’ll grow another as a crab grows a new claw,” Luke said consolingly, as he saw the look of anguish on Sammy’s face.
“No, I didn’t pull the alligator’s tail off!” declared Dot. “It was on too fast, I guess. But I pulled him and he came out of the crack, and the stone came out with him and there’s a hole there, and there’s an iron box in the hole, and——”
Dot did not finish. With whoops on the part of the boys and shrieks on the part of the girls, the whole party made a rush for the cellar. The afternoon sun was now shining in it, making the place fairly bright.
“Show me where you pulled the ’gator out, Dot!” begged Neale.
“There. You can see the hole and the iron box!”
And there it was!
The lost treasure! Curiously, as they discovered later, one of the points of the white star on the beam overhead pointed directly to the stone in the wall behind which the iron box had been hidden for so many years. It was thus the clew should have been interpreted, it seemed.
It was an old box of thin sheet iron, and not heavy cast iron, and as it was rusty it was soon opened. Out on the bench in the yard the hidden wealth, for the first time in many years, was exposed to the light of the sun.
“Then those men were right after all!” murmured Ruth.
“In a way, yes,” admitted Luke. “But it took Dot and Sammy’s alligator to get at the real secret.”