gave me some points, and I remember them. Of course I may
be several thousands out of the way, but----"

"Oh, fifty thousand dollars is a nice enough sum--to dream about," Betty
said, with a gurgling laugh. "It will do very well, Daddy dear."

"But isn't it the most wonderful thing, that we should find all those
diamonds!" gasped Mollie.

"Who could have hidden them?" wondered Amy.

"That's what we've got to find out," put in Allen. "I suggested the
newspapers," he went on to Mr. Nelson.

"And a good idea," that gentleman said.

"Oh, Betty. Let's look at the box, and see how the wonderful false
bottom fitted in," proposed Mollie. "I think it was the most perfectly
gorgeous thing how you happened to discover it."

"And that's just how it was--a happening," the Little Captain remarked.
"Oh, but if those men in the boat should discover that we have those
diamonds, and come for them," and Betty glanced nervously over her
shoulder.

"Ha! Let them deal with _me_!" exclaimed Will, as he displayed his
Secret Service badge. "I'll attend to the--pirates!"

"I thought your specialty was--smugglers," voiced Allen, with a chuckle.

"Smugglers or pirates, it is all one to me!" Will declaimed, strutting
about.

"Oh, but----" began Betty.

"Well, what?" Will asked. "Think I'm afraid?"

"No--oh, no. I was thinking of something else."

And to Betty came a vision of those glowering faces in the window of the
fisherman's hut on the beach.

CHAPTER XV

A NIGHT ALARM

The diamonds were wrapped again in their protective covering of tissue
paper. The girls could hardly take their eyes off them as Mr. Nelson put
them in his pocketbook.

"Oh, it doesn't seem--real," sighed Betty, with a long breath.

"No, it _is_ like some fairy story," agreed Mollie. "And to think the
box has been in the house two or three days, and we never knew what a
treasure it contained."

"Because of that secret compartment," suggested Amy. "Wasn't it just
wonderful?"

That same false bottom of the tin box was interesting the boys more,
just then, than were the diamonds themselves. Will, Allen, Roy and Henry
gathered around the queer jewel casket.

"There, it's shut!" exclaimed Will, as a click proclaimed that he had
pushed the two folding leaves of sheet iron back into place.

"You'd never know but that that was the real bottom," said Roy.

"Let's see if we can open it again," proposed Allen.

The boys tried, pushing here and ther