"It seems to me," answered her mother, "that it must have been dropped by accident into the chest by the person who emptied the bottle, and therefore that same person must have been helping us when we opened the box."
"I know what you're driving at, mother," exclaimed Guy. "You think I used the spirit, and I've told you heaps of times I didn't. How does cook know it's the same cork? There may be hundreds of corks exactly the same size, and you couldn't tell one from another."
"There was no mistaking this one for another," was the answer. "It had once been stuck in a bottle of red ink, and the end was stained."
"Well, I don't know anything about it," said Guy. "Perhaps," he continued, struck with a bright idea—"perhaps father cribbed the spirit to fill that thing he lights his pipes and cigars with, and he may have dropped the cork into the box. You'd better ask him when he comes home."
There was a laugh, in which Mrs. Ormond joined. "I don't think your father is the culprit," she answered.—"Of course, if Guy says he hasn't touched the bottle, we must believe him.—Ida, did you or Elsie use the spirit for anything?"
Both girls shook their heads, and Brian also declared himself innocent.
"It's a rum thing how it came to be inside the chest," he remarked. "It's just like a conjuring trick."
"It certainly seems very funny," replied his aunt; "but, like most conjuring tricks, I dare say the explanation would be very simple if it were ever given."
Guy was impatient to test the power and accuracy of his birthday present. He painted a bull's-eye on a piece of board, with rings numbered 1, 2, 3, each about two inches wide, and then the question was to find a suitable place for practice.
"It's a beastly cold wind outside," he said; "I know what we'll do. We'll hang it up in the tool-house. Come on, Ida and Elsie; we'll all have a try."