The following night, Jean—Nathalie had put the boy to bed for the day, letting her mother think that he had one of his headaches to which he was subject—and Tony accompanied the girl to the tree. But alas, for the second time nothing came to pass. Nathalie began to be discouraged. Fortunately it rained that night, and, as they could not venture out, they all had a good night’s rest. The fourth night again found the girl with the boys at her post, oppressed and miserable, for by this time she began to fear that the man in the woods was a snare and a delusion,—something she had dreamed, or else he had gone. But why did he leave that jewelry behind?—for the children had discovered that there were other pieces hidden in that hole, or very near it. All at once—Nathalie had fallen quite sound asleep—Jean gave her a pinch; he was snuggling up against her, seated on her lap. The girl opened her eyes sleepily, rubbed them drowsily, and then stretched them wide, caught by the gleam of a light over by the rock. Yes, the man was there! Her heart leaped excitedly, for he was digging under the rock, just where they had found the jewelry! With stilled breath, the three figures, hidden by the tree, watched him, Nathalie’s mind keeping up an incessant query as to how she could steal around behind the rock to get a view of his face. Ah, that queer shaking of the head! Who was it that she had seen who had that peculiar nervous affliction? And then, in a sudden revelation, she knew! It was the man who had stared at her so rudely in the post-office, the man who had repaired her automobile. Why, it was the man known as _the Count_! CHAPTER XXIII A MYSTERY SOLVED Several hours later, Nathalie, Nita, Sheila, the three boys, and Mrs. Van Vorst were seated in that lady’s sitting-room on the second floor of the Sunset Hill House, overlooking the roof of the front veranda. Nathalie was nervously tapping the floor with her foot, as, with a perplexed, uneasy expression in her eyes, she watched Mr. Grenoble, the secret-service man, who had been employed to fathom the strange mystery of the many jewelry thefts that had occurred at the hotel within the last few weeks. She had told her story, not only to the detective, but to the manager of the hotel, explaining how she had come to discover the man digging in the woods the night that Sheila had wandered away. She had told also how they had all dug under the rock, to find the pieces of missing jewelry, and how she and the boys had hid in the woods, and finally had seen the man again digging by the rock. She had verified her story in its details, and, although sharply questioned by the detective and the manager, she had stoutly maintained that the man whom she had seen was Mr. Keating, known as the Count. But her intuition immediately revealed to her that they were not inclined to accept her theory as to the identification of the thief.