“After bigger game perhaps,” Mr. Smith suggested. “Lions, or hippopotamuses.” “No,” said Punch, “I’m not hunting _anything_, really.” “You aren’t _being_ hunted, are you?” Mr. Smith wanted to know. I thought the boy flushed a little. “No, I guess not,” he said. “I suppose,” the old man suggested, “if they’re keeping such late hours over at The Oaks, the mornings must be pretty slow.” “Yes,” Punch admitted, “they are, rather. Oh, everybody’s up but nobody’s doing anything. Nobody but Bruce Applebury. He went off to town on the morning train, with Judy.” I don’t know what happened to my face at that, but I can answer for Mr. Smith’s. There wasn’t a flicker of an eyelid to betray anything. Punch was looking at him just as I was, and he went on, “He’s the man who’s going to marry Judy, you know. He was afraid he wouldn’t get the sort of wedding ring she liked, so he took her in to-day to pick it out.” He sighed and added, “I’ll be glad when this business is all over.” “How’s your grandmother?” Mr. Smith asked. “Oh, she’s better this morning, now that she knows the necklace has come back,” the boy said. “Of course it was an awful shock to her last night when she found it had been stolen.” I’d been holding my breath waiting for this to happen, from the moment I had seen how friendly was the relation between the old gentleman and the boy, but I hadn’t expected it to come out with a plop like that. I felt rather embarrassed over my own reticence, but Mr. Smith didn’t even indirectly reproach me with it. “I didn’t know the necklace had been stolen,” he said. “I’ve only just got here, you see. Tell me about it.” “There’s Donovan,” I pointed out. “He’s coming up to tell us lunch is ready, I expect. You’ll stay, won’t you, Punch? And then you can tell Mr. Smith the whole story of how the necklace was stolen.--And perhaps,” I added, “you’ll tell me, too, the details of how it came back.” For I didn’t see any point, now that the cat had got out, in trying to make a mystery of the empty bag. I was relieved, though, that Punch’s story, which he told with admirable lucidity at lunch time, was considerably abridged where it touched Judy. Of course at that time I knew nothing of the letter that had been pushed through the narrow neck of the Chinese vase, nor of her nocturnal excursion for its recovery. Punch’s account of his adventures that night left this episode out. He told us how, when he couldn’t sleep in his room on the top floor, he’d come down to the davenport in the hall below; how he’d seen a man in pajamas going up-stairs; how the mystery had completely baffled him at the time; how Miss Digby had told him of the fright she’d had, and how, between sleep and waking he’d figured out what had happened. “Good work, Punch,” Mr. Smith said, when the tale was told. “I’m proud of you.” His tone, though, wasn’t as enthusiastic as his words. He’d spoken with only half his mind, as if out of some deep preoccupation.