e ever seen."

"I guess it will," laughed Hester, and then, for some unknown reason,
they both burst into fits of immoderate laughter. Evidently something
connected with Fanning's new enterprise was deemed highly amusing by both
of them.

Peggy left without seeing Hester, although from behind a blind in the
cottage, the girl watched her closely enough. Gid, whatever his other
shortcomings might have been, was a good blacksmith, and the rod was well
repaired. Peggy soon had it adjusted, and was about to clamber into the
chassis and start home when a shout from the road made her look up. An
automobile stood there, and in it were Jess and Jimsy. They hailed her
excitedly, and Peggy hastily threw out the switch which she had just
adjusted and hastened across the field to them.

She soon saw that Jess was waving a leather pocket case above her head
and that her face was flushed and excited.

"My dear Jess, whatever has happened?" she cried, as she came up to the
side of the auto.

"Happened!" echoed Jess. "Why, my dear, the most extraordinary,
inexplicable thing you ever heard of."

"In other words, 'we are up in the air,'" quoth the slangy Jimsy, "even
if we don't own an aeroplane."

"You see this case," cried Jess, extending the leather wallet for Peggy's
inspection. "Well, that's the case that held mamma's jewels. It was
returned most strangely to us this afternoon. We found it on the porch
after lunch.

"Oh, Jess! the jewels were in it. I'm so glad."

"No, girlie, it was empty."

"Empty!" echoed Peggy, "and nobody knows how it came there?"

"No, we must have been at lunch at the time. None of the servants know
anything about the matter, either. It's a real, dark and deep mystery."

"It's all of that, my dear Watson," proclaimed Jimsy, folding his arms
and scowling in imitation of a famous detective of fiction. "Why on earth
should the thief want to return the wallet? You'd think he'd dodge such a
risk of being arrested."

But Peggy had been looking at the wallet which had so amazingly
reappeared.

"Why, Jess," she cried, "it's all mud-stained. It looks as if it had been
buried somewhere."

"It certainly does," agreed Jimsy, "but even that doesn't give us any
more to go on than the theory that the jewels have been buried some
place."

"And been dug up again," put in Peggy, quickly.

After some more conversation the group was about to break up, when Jess
exclaimed suddenly:

"Oh, by the way, did yo