"Lady Carleton, as she wishes every one fully to know, hid the box in which she had put the jewels among the ferns on the rockery. Lennox, who had left the place the week before, came back on the sly to see his sweetheart, and, according to his statement to you, stole the jewels, threw the box into the pond, and put the jewels for security into that great hole, just within a man's reach. You explained why he never came back for them, and if he had I don't see how he would have got them out, for of course they slipped through the smaller hole in the bottom of the visible hollow, of which he was not aware. Wyn Warren stopped that hole up to make a nesting-place for the squirrels, little thinking what he was burying away. He did his work so cleverly that the other day, when his father inspected this great shallow hole, he never thought of the cave beneath. "And now this great discovery has been made by so strange a set of accidents that they must be called Providential: the losing of the letter, my little girl picking it up and this young woman finding it, which, I suppose, led to her knowing of the search for the jewels; Wyn's good-nature in getting Lily the honeysuckle; your offer of the wild-flower prize--all these trifles have worked in to clear up a most unhappy perplexity. And, Mr Henry Whittaker, I beg to congratulate you." "And I," said Mr Cunningham, holding out his hand to Harry, "to apologise for having misjudged you." Harry touched his hat first and then took the extended hand. "Thank you, sir," he said. "It's very handsome of you to say so; but, under the circumstances, I should certainly have suspected myself." "You will all come in to Ravenshurst and get some supper, and look at the jewels in a better light?" said Sir Philip. "Thank you," said Alwyn, "but my brother will want me, and Whittaker and I would like to walk back together, if you don't mind driving home alone, father." "As you will," said Mr Cunningham; then, in a lower tone, "I am glad we had it out to-day, Alwyn. That was poor Edgar's doing; he will be glad of this." So the group, so strangely gathered together, dispersed. Harry and Alwyn walked away through the wood together. Theirs had been a strange comradeship, first for evil and then for good, in bad fortune and good fortune. It was hardly likely that they could be as close companions in the future as they had been in the past, but there would always be a tie between them that nothing could loosen.