"It will have aroused their suspicions, too, and will make them extra careful," lamented Lindsay. "If Scott recognized us, he and Mrs. Wilson will know we're watching them. They'll owe us a grudge. 'The Griffin' was bad enough before, but she'll be worse than ever now." They scanned the old housekeeper's face narrowly next morning, as she carried the coffee into the dining-room, but her countenance wore its accustomed aspect of grim inscrutability. If she connected them with last night's happenings, she certainly did not betray the knowledge; it was impossible to tell whether she mistrusted them or not, or what feelings lay concealed under her forbidding exterior. The moment breakfast was over, they rushed into the garden to renew their acquaintance with the scene of their adventure. Somebody had plainly been digging in the bank, though the traces had evidently been tidied carefully up, and the sods replaced. "Do you think there could be anything here?" said Cicely wistfully, poking a stick into the loosened soil. "Oh, dear me, no!" replied Lindsay. "Why, the first thing they'd do would be to rush off with that sack to some safer spot. Even the very stupidest persons wouldn't have gone on burying valuables in a place where they knew they'd been watched. 'The Griffin' and Scott are certainly not idiots!" "If we could only guess where they'd put it!" sighed Cicely. For the present they had had such a fright that, though neither would confess it, both were a little inclined to let the matter rest in abeyance. It needed courage to risk the anger of Mrs. Wilson and Scott if they were once more caught meddling. It had seemed pleasant enough to search for the treasure themselves in the house, but the affair was now beginning to assume a graver aspect. "I sometimes wonder if we ought to tell Monica or Miss Russell," said Cicely, who occasionally had uneasy scruples as to the wisdom of their plan of secrecy. "It wouldn't be of the slightest use," declared Lindsay. "'The Griffin' and Scott would simply deny everything. They'd make out it was all nonsense on our part, like grown-up people generally do. And how could we prove we were right? Miss Russell would tell us to mind our own business, and we should only get into a scrape for our pains. No, we shall just have to let things take their course, and trust to luck." CHAPTER X Under the Hawthorn Tree