'm sure that if
nothing happens you'll win that race to-morrow, Roy."

"I hope so, little sister," was the response, "for there's a whole lot
depending on it."

"But just think. If you only do we shall be at the end of our troubles."

"Not quite, sis," Roy reminded her, "that affair of the missing jewels is
still a mystery, and as long as it stays so some folks will always be
suspicious of me."

"Oh, Roy, don't say such things. Nobody but the horridest of the horrid
would----"

"Unluckily," struck in the boy, "there are a lot of the horridest of the
horrid in this world, and some of them are in Sandy Bay."

He laughed and then went on more seriously:

"It's a pretty nasty feeling, I can tell you, to know that you are
unjustly suspected by several folks of--of--er--knowing more about an
affair of that kind than you tell."

"What can have become of the jewels?"

"Ah, that's just it. Of course we have our suspicion, based really on
nothing, that Fanning Harding knows something about them. But if he did
why would he place that wallet on the porch of Jess's home?"

"It's beyond me."

"And beyond me, too. I'm quite sure that nobody was about the place when
the accident happened, and I could not have been unconscious more than a
few seconds. Now who could have stolen the wallet in that time?"

"It will all come out in time. I'm sure of it, Roy, dear," said Peggy,
earnestly. "Perhaps it will turn out to be not such a mystery after all."

"I don't know," was Roy's rejoinder. "Mr. Bancroft has had some of the
cleverest detectives in the country on the case, and a description of the
jewels, some of which were heirlooms, has been wired everywhere
broadcast. But up to date none of them have turned up at any pawnshops or
other likely places."

For some moments more they talked in this strain, when Peggy suddenly
gave a cry and pointed below. They were passing over a tiny lake
surrounded by steeply sloping banks, wooded with beautiful trees. It was
an isolated spot, no human habitation being near at hand apparently.

"Oh, isn't that pretty?" cried Peggy delightedly. "It looks as if it
might have come out of a picture book."

"And the sight of that water reminds me that I'm terribly thirsty," said
Roy. "I bet there are some springs by that lake, or if there are not
maybe the water is good to drink from the lake itself."

"Let's go down and see," said Peggy, with a bright smile, and setting
over a lever and twisting