only place you children hunted for gold?" asked Mr. Bunker,
as he saw Rose coming along.

"Yes, Daddy," she answered. "And we were right there when I didn't have
my locket any more. Can't you find it?"

"I haven't yet," he answered. "I've raked over the sand as carefully as
I could, but I didn't see the locket."

"Did you look down into the holes we dug, Daddy?"

"Yes, and all around them. It's queer, but the locket seems to have
disappeared."

"Maybe a starfish came up and took it down into the ocean with him."

"No, Rose. If the locket was dropped on the beach it is here yet. But it
is rather a large place, and perhaps I am not looking just where I ought
to. However I will not give up."

Daddy Bunker looked for some little time longer, pulling the sand about
with the rake, but no locket showed. Then others looked, including the
children, Cousin Tom, his wife and Mother Bunker. But they had no better
luck.

"Well, we know one thing," said Daddy Bunker. "There is gold in this
sand now if there was not before. Rose's gold locket is here."

"And I don't guess I'll ever find it," said the little girl with a sigh.
"Oh, dear!"

"Maybe it slipped off your neck in the house," suggested Cousin Ruth.
"I'll look carefully, and you may help me."

But this did no good either, and though the search was a careful one,
and though the sand was gone over again, the lost locket was not picked
up.

"I'm going to dig every day until I find it!" said Rose.

"And I'll help!" added Russ.

"So will I!" said Laddie; and the other children, when they knew what a
loss had come to Rose, said they, also, would help.

If it had not been for this accident the visit of the six little Bunkers
to Seaview would have been without a flaw. Even as it was, it turned out
to be most delightful. Seaview was a fine place to spend the end of the
summer, and Cousin Tom and his wife made the children feel so at home,
and did so much for them, that Russ and the others said they never had
been in a nicer place.

"If I only had my locket!" sighed Rose, as the days passed.

But it seemed it would never be found, and after a time, the thought of
it passed, in a measure, from the little girl's mind. She did not speak
of it often, though sometimes when she went down on the beach, near the
holes she and Russ had dug in the moonlight, Rose looked about and
scraped the sand to and fro with a shell or a bit of driftwood.

But as the beach looks pretty