“Not yet,” rejoined Hester; “I believe if he had he would have been violent.”
“Well, Hester,” said Peggy, as the girl concluded her strange narrative, “you have cleared up a puzzling mystery.”
“Did you ever hear such a yarn in all your born days?” asked Jimsy.
“And every one of the jewels is there,” cried Jess. “I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll just call up the house and tell mother about it. Won’t she be pleased?”
But Mrs. Bancroft was not at home, and––
“Oh, miss,” gasped the servant, who answered the ’phone, “we’re all upset. Morgan has run off, miss, and so has Giles. They took some of the silver with them. Mary and me tried to stop ’em but they pointed a pistol at us and scared us inter high strikes.”
“I’ll ’phone the police at once,” cried Jess, indignantly. “They might have got off if it hadn’t been for that.”
But although a good description was furnished, Morgan and Giles were not captured and Mr. Bancroft was not ill pleased.
“They will not venture into this part of the country again,” he said, “and we are well rid of such rascals.”
Hester, in whom Mrs. Bancroft took an interest after the girl had told her with her own lips her strange story, is now at a girls’ boarding school, having been sent there at Mrs. Bancroft’s expense.