"Oh, I never said a word!" Percy cried. Indeed he only heard the story of the find, after the scare.
"Of course if some men from this neighborhood hid the diamonds in the sand, and knew we girls took them out, and if they were around the house and heard something of the excitement the night papa took them down cellar, it would explain how they knew where to look for them," Betty said.
"Too many ifs," commented Allen. "Have there been any strangers around lately—tramps or anyone like that?"
At first Betty said there had been none, but later she recalled that a maid had reported to her that an undesirable specimen of a man had begged something to eat at the kitchen door the morning after Mr. Nelson had hid the diamonds down cellar.
"And," Betty said, "he may have been hanging around when father and Will left for Boston that day."
"But how could he know the stones were hidden down cellar?" asked Mollie.
"I don't know that he could tell that, exactly," Betty admitted, "but if you remember, as papa was going away he called back: 'Be sure to keep the cellar locked!' Don't you remember?"
"Yes, I heard that," Amy contributed.
"Well, if a tramp, who was not really a tramp, but some one in disguise, heard that he might jump to some conclusion," Betty went on.
"Too much jumping," Allen said. "As a matter of fact we're all in the dark about this."