"Teddy and me—we saw it!" added Jan.
"Well, that was all of the meteor we could find for some time," went on Mr. Weston. "And as that burned up—was consumed—we didn't have any. Then, the other night through the bushes we happened to come upon some blue stones, and I took them away.
"Then my friend and I hunted again to find the big piece of the fallen star, but we could not come across it. I was about to give up, but now we are all right. I am so glad! Can you take me to the big blue rock?"
"We will to-morrow," answered Hal. "It's too dark to find it now."
"You had better stay in our camp until morning," was Grandpa Martin's kindly invitation, and Mr. Weston did so.
"This meteor is a good bit like a sulphur match," said Mr. Weston. "When anything hard, like iron or steel, strikes it, blue fire starts and burns up the rock. The big piece will be very valuable.
"But we'll have to be careful not to set it ablaze. We picked up a lot of different rocks on the island, hoping some of them might be pieces of the meteor. But none was. Once I saw your little girl picking flowers, as I was gathering rocks. I guess she thought I was a tramp. Did I scare you?" he asked Janet.
"A little," she answered with a smile. "Sometimes we stayed in a cave we found on the island," went on Mr. Weston. "I thought once the meteor might be there, but it was not."
The next day Ted, Janet and Hal, followed by all the others in camp, even down to Trouble, whose mother carried him, went to the place where the big blue rock was buried in the side of the hill. As soon as he had looked at it Mr. Weston said it was the very meteor for which he and Professor Anderson had been looking so long. They seemed to have missed coming to the hill.
The museum directors bought the fallen star from Grandpa Martin, on whose part of the island it had fallen many years before, and so the owner of Cherry Farm had as much money as before the flood spoiled so many of his crops.