st have the ruby to let me wear.

"I guess he wanted to show me that he was as rich as he was always
pretending to be.

"A few days later they had a terrible fright. Morgan, who carried the
leather wallet in his pocket for lack of a better place to put it,
dropped it on the porch of the Bancrofts' house where, as you know, it
was found before he realized his loss and could recover it.

"When Fanning came back from the aviation meet and began boasting of the
mean tricks he had played you and how he had kidnapped Roy, I began to
see what a despicable fellow he was. Then, too, he was always threatening
dad, and so I decided to make a clean breast of it all and save poor dad
any more trouble, for Fanning has dictated to him ever since they shared
the secret.

"I went to the wood and found the marked tree I had heard them talk about
so often and with the jewels in my hand I started for your home, Peggy,
for I didn't dare to go to the Bancrofts'. But Fanning, it seems, had got
suspicious, and followed me. He overtook me at the spot where you
encountered us."

"Does he know you have the jewels?" asked Roy.

"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.

As for Fanning Harding, his father sent him West soon after