When at last the stone was overturned, there was indeed something snugly tucked into a hole dug beneath it—a bundle tied up in a bandana handkerchief. Miser Jensen always wore old-fashioned bandana handkerchiefs. When the girls opened it they found it filled, not with spoils of the Butternut Corner clothes-lines, but with watches and jewelry, most of it marked with the name of Burton, the Bymport jeweller, whom Dave Perley and Alf Coombs were suspected of having robbed.
Patty burst into tears of joy.
"It was miser Jensen who robbed the store! Tilly, don't you see what it means? No one can ever say it was the boys again!"
Tilly trembled in all her thin little frame, but her face was alight with joy. "I know where they are! I can tell now," she said, proudly, "Alf wrote to me. They are both in my cousin's store in L——; it's a jewelry store. It was because Alf liked to see watches and things fixed that he was always at Burton's, and so they suspected him. Dave didn't want to be a minister or a farmer; that was why he ran away, but he wants to come home; he says it doesn't pay to run away; and now he can!"
All the cloud lifted from Butternut Hill. Patty could go home and tell Uncle Reuben and Aunt Eunice; it seemed to her too good to be true.
They forgot all about the spoons; even Tilly forgot them. And when Aunt Eunice heard the good news, she said she didn't care anything about the spoons, but she would do everything she could to make amends to Tilly Coombs for the unjust suspicions.
The spoons were found the very next day. Jake Nesmith, the blacksmith, saw the corner of the napkin in which they were wrapped sticking out of a mud-puddle. Ruby had pulled them out of the basket with the chickens, and dropped them in the snow.
Wheels had gone over them, and they had to be sent down to Burton's to be bent into shape—that was all.
Alf Coombs is still in his cousin's store, where he does well, but Dave has come home to Butternut Hill. He says he isn't sure that he shall ever be a minister or a farmer, but he is sure he shall never be wild again. The awful suspicion that fell upon him cured him of that. Miser Jensen was found and arrested, and confessed the theft; he escaped from prison, but there is no fear that he will ever return to Butternut Corner. Dr. Nutting wished to send Tilly to the Academy with Ruby—the whole story of the ravelled mitten was told after the spoons were found; no one could expect a human girl like Patty to keep it—but Tilly thought she had a knack for millinery, and she liked to be independent, and Miss Farnham wanted her; she says she is a good business woman, although she is only fifteen.
The doctor always takes off his hat to Tilly Coombs, while he gives only a careless nod to the other fifteen-year-old girls. The minister, who is his great friend, and hears a good deal about Butternut Corner people through him, does so too, and just now the young people of the Corner are making preparations for another birthday surprise party. They have hired the new Town-hall, because the little house at the foot of the hill wouldn't begin to hold Tilly's troops of friends, and everything is to be in the very best style that is known to Butternut Corner, because they want Tilly to feel that she is "just like other folks."