d with dignity. "I have merely found out who the Seabourne burglars
are, that's all. At least, I have put my hand on one of them, and that
one is Miss Carson. This afternoon, locked up in her trunk in the
dressing-room upstairs, I found all Colonel Baker's plate and other
valuable things."

"Rot!" exclaimed Geoffrey incredulously.

"It isn't rot at all," said Hilary nonchalantly; "it's the truth. But
when I taxed her with the crime she denied it."

"Well, of course she did," said Geoffrey. "Of all the nonsense I ever
heard this is about the greatest."

Hilary shrugged her shoulders. "Call it nonsense if you like," she said,
"but there are the things themselves, every one of them, even to the
Indian tablecloth she carried them off in, upstairs in her box at this
moment. Go and see them for yourselves if you don't believe me. And if
she didn't put them there, who did? Pray tell me that."

Noel looked at Jack, and Jack looked back at Noel. Then they sighed. The
moment for confession had undoubtedly arrived, and they both took a step
forward.

"We put them there," they said together.

"You!" exclaimed simultaneously every voice in the room except Hilary's,
and she was too utterly dumbfounded even to utter that monosyllable.

"It was a joke," said Noel. "Tommy started it really. It was his idea,
and he got us to hide the whole of the beastly things here. I am sure we
wish we had never seen them. Of course we didn't know the trunk belonged
to Miss Carson, or we wouldn't have hidden them in it. We thought it was
an old one of mother's that was never used. We would have taken them back
to Colonel Baker ages ago, only Tommy, the young idiot! chose to go off
to Scotland and took the key with him. We couldn't open the trunk anyhow,
though we tried ever so many keys."

"Oh boys, boys!" moaned Mrs. Danvers, "a nice mess you have got
yourselves into. The Colonel will be furious. You have made him the
laughing stock of the town. He will certainly summons you, and it will
get into the papers, and you will certainly be expelled from Osborne and
Dartmouth."

"And serve them right too, for a couple of silly young asses!" growled
Geoffrey.

"That is all very well," said Hilary, swallowing her intense
mortification as well as she could; "but what about this case?" opening
it and displaying as she spoke the locket encircled by the string of
pearls. "I found it locked up in her dressing bag, and she declares it is
hers, although