Her solitary musings were, however, put to flight by the appearance of the younger children, with whom she was a great favourite, and who had gained an hour's respite from their usual "bed-time" upon this, their cousin's last night at home. Tom, and Will, and Sally, and Ben, had indeed received the tidings of their beloved "Molly's" impending departure with great dismay; and their vociferous lamentations were hardly to be checked by their mother's assurances that one day "Cousin Molly" might come back to see them, when she was "a great lady, riding in her coach and six," and would bring them picture-books and gilt gingerbread.
It was with a strange pang at her heart that Mary now submitted to the loving, if rather boisterous, caresses of the urchins who climbed her lap and clung around her neck.
But Mary had not chosen her quiet seat with a view to childhood's romps or she had chosen a safer one. As it was the shout of merriment was quickly followed by a sudden cry, a splash, and a simultaneous exclamation of dismay from Mary and the children. Will, the youngest, most troublesome, and therefore best beloved of the family, the four-years-old "baby," had slipped on the curb of the well, overbalanced himself, and fallen in; dropping a toy into the water as he did so. In a moment Mary was on her feet. Seizing the bucket, she called the elder boys to work the windlass, and, with firm, but quiet instructions and a face as white as death, consigned herself to the unknown deep.
Near the bottom of the well, which was not very deep, she came upon her little cousin suspended by his clothes to a hook fastened in the well side. She was not long in disengaging the little fellow's clothes from the friendly hook, and was about to signal to be drawn up, when beneath the hook, and explanatory of it—"near the water, by the fern"—what was it? A large hole in the side of the well, and in it—the Trevern treasure, found at last!
Though the lapse of many years had rotted some of the leather covering of the jewel casket, the gems themselves, when lifted out, flashed forth in undimmed beauty; the silver cups and flagons, if discoloured, were still intact, and the papers in the metal case were well preserved.
These last proved of great importance to Roger Trevern, enabling him to substantiate his claim to some disputed property, which was quite sufficient to relieve his estate of all its embarrassments.
And as for Mary, she restored her youngest cousin to his mother's arms, and took the eldest to her own.