"Besides, if he had wanted to put an edge on it, he'd never have ground the whole blade thin like that," added Brian.
"Put it away somewhere," said Mr. Ormond, "and I'll have a look at it again when I come back."
The little group dispersed. Brian and Guy went away to mend the boat, while Elsie, left to herself, wandered out into the yard and entered the tool-house. There stood the grindstone in its usual place, looking a very unromantic object indeed; but the girl viewed it with almost bated breath. She had quite made up her mind that connected with that grindstone was a mystery in which the poultry-carver was somehow concerned. What this secret was she could not imagine; but the belief grew in her mind that if she had been able to summon up sufficient courage to have crossed the yard that night, and to have peeped round the door of the tool-house, she might now be able to explain how and why the poultry-carver had found its way to the bottom of the pond.
She longed to tell the others what was in her thoughts, but pride made her hold her tongue. She did not like being made fun of, and she felt sure that any reference to what Ida called her "dream" about the grindstone was certain to be received with nothing but ridicule by both brother and sister.
In one corner of the tool-house stood Uncle Roger's iron-bound box, which, since the eventful evening when it was opened, had been banished from the library in disgrace, Mr. Ormond wishing to put a small bookcase in the space which the box had hitherto occupied.
Elsie tried to lift the lid, but the two padlocks had been refastened to prevent their being lost. She sat down on the chest, and began drumming her feet on the dark oak planks.
"What a disappointment that old box has proved!" thought the girl. "I wonder if there ever was anything in it. Father seems to think it couldn't possibly have been opened, but then how did that cork with Greenworthy's name on it come to be inside? I do wish it had been full of money. It would have been jolly to have had a real pony, and to have learned to ride."
"If wishes were horses," runs the old proverb, "then beggars would ride;" and Elsie had to rest content with a short day-dream, from which she at length awoke with a little sigh of regret.
An hour or two later, as Guy unstrapped his pile of school books and flung them down on the breakfast-room table, he referred to the discovery which had been made earlier in the day.
"The pater can't understand that carving-knife. I wonder how in the world it got into the pond!"