e _nor_ hair
of it."

"Might he not have sold it?" Hilda suggested.

Farmer Hartley shook his head, "No," he said, "he warn't that kind.
Besides, he thought to the day of his death that he hed it, sure enough.
'Thar's the princess's necklace!' he'd say; 'don't ye forgit that,
Wealthy! Along with the di'monds, ye know.' And then he'd laugh like he
was fit to bust. Why, when he was act'lly dyin', so fur gone 't he
couldn' speak plain, he called me to him, an' made signs he wanted to
tell me somethin'. I stooped down clost, an' he whispered somethin'; but
all I could hear was 'di'monds,' and 'dig,' and then in a minute 'twas
all over. Poor old Father! He'd been a good skipper, an' a good man all
his days."

He was silent for a time, while Hilda pondered over the story, which she
could not make up her mind to disbelieve altogether.

"Wal! wal! and here we are at the old farm agin!" said the farmer
presently, as old Nancy turned in at the yellow gate. "Here I've been
talkin' the everlastin' way home, ain't I? You must herry and git into
the house, Huldy, for _I_ d' 'no' how the machine's managed to run
without ye all this time. I sha'n't take ye out agin ef I find anythin's
wrong."

CHAPTER X.

A PARTY OF PLEASURE.

On a certain lovely afternoon the three happiest people in the world (so
they styled themselves, and they ought to know) were gathered together
in a certain spot, which was _next_ to the prettiest spot in the world.

"You should have had _the_ prettiest, Pink," said Hilda, "but we could
not get your chair down into the glen, you know. My poor, dear Pink, you
have never seen the glen, have you?"

"No," answered Pink Chirk, cheerily. "But I have heard so much about it,
I really feel as if I had seen it, almost. And indeed I don't think it
_can_ be much lovelier than this place."

However that might be, the place they had chosen was certainly pretty
enough to satisfy any one. Not far from Mrs. Chirk's cottage was a
little pine-grove, easy of access, and with trees far enough apart to
allow the wheeled chair to pass between them. And in the grove, just in
a little open space where two or three trees had been cut away, was a
great black rock, with ferns growing in all its cracks and crannies, and
a tiny birch-tree waving like a green and white plume on its top. And at
the foot of the rock--oh, what a wonderful thing!--a slender thread of
crystal water came trickling out, as cold as ice and as clea