been made to meet the spirit of the letter left by
the late Peter Westley----"

"You will _not_ drop it, will you?"

"Indeed not. I wired him to put all the men he could find on the case.
And I am going to do some work on my own account."

"You?"

"Yes--I have a clue all of my own." He laughed, folding the letter and
putting it away.

"Really, John?"

"Yes--a foolish sort of a clue--I can scarcely tell it to a man like
Trimmer. It's only a pair of eyes----"

"I suppose if you're like all other sleuths you will not tell _me_
anything more," said Mrs. Westley, wondering if he was really in
earnest. "When and where will your personal search begin?"

"I'd like to start this moment, but I happened to think I could drive
Jerry home, and then I can make the test of my experiment."

"Drive Jerry home----" his words reached the ears of the young people,
coming into the hall. It was Friday evening and they had been at the
moving-pictures.

"_Who's_ going to drive Jerry home? You, Uncle Johnny? Can't I go, too?
Oh, please, _please_----" Gyp fell upon him, pleadingly.

"Oh, I wish the girls _could_ go," added Jerry.

"Why not?" Uncle Johnny turned to Mrs. Westley. "Then you wouldn't have
to worry your head over clothes and hotel space at the seashore! And
Mrs. Allan's up there across at Cobble with a house big enough for a
dozen----"

"But they must stay at Sunnyside," protested Jerry, her face glowing.

Always, now, at the back of her head, were persistent thoughts of home.
She had counted the days off on her little calendar; she saw, in the
bright loveliness with which the springtime had dressed the city, only a
proud vision of what her beloved Kettle must be like; she hunted violets
on the slopes of Highacres and dreamed of the blossoming hepaticas in
the Witches' Glade and the dear sun-shadowed corners where the bloodroot
grew and the soft budding beauty of the birches that lined the trail up
Kettle. She longed with a longing that hurt for her little garden--for
the smell of the freshly-turned soil, for the first strawberries, for
the fragrance of the lilacs that grew under her small window, for the
clean, cool, grass-scented valley wind. And yet her heart was torn
with the thought that those very days she had counted on her calendar
marked the coming separation from Gyp and the schoolmates at
Highacres--Highacres itself. She must go away from them all and all that
they were doing and they would in time forge