“Yes,” David reminded her bitterly, “and slipped away on a chase after a will-o’-the-wisp, lit his candle and came up here to this place when he might have been of some real use at home. He even brought us there after him, though he did not know it, just at the time when the man he dreaded had really come. If he had only been sensible—” “Don’t let him think of that,” said Betsey. “Yes, he went at just the wrong minute but he must be kept from remembering it.” Michael must have suspected that their whispered discussion concerned the truth of his strange notions. “Maybe I was wrong,” he said miserably, “but did not my own eyes see Something stand there by the pool, did not my ears hear a splash in the water that boded no good. If it had only been running water—” Betsey felt David start suddenly in the dark. “Say that again, Michael,” he ordered breathlessly. The old Irishman repeated the words faithfully, even to the groan at the end of them. David’s excitement was rapidly communicating itself to Betsey. “That was on the night Miss Miranda’s father was taken ill,” she said, although of this explanation there was no need. “I know, I know,” the boy returned quickly, “but wasn’t Mr. Reynolds in his shop all the rest of the evening? That is what has puzzled me.” “I looked in once and he was gone,” she answered, “but it was for such a little while that I never thought of it again. Oh, if we should find what is lost, at last!” David was already on his feet, peering over the stone wall toward the pool. “We should try to get Michael home first,” Betsey objected, seeing already what was in his mind. “No, no,” the Irishman insisted, having only a vague notion of what they were about, but feeling excitement in the air. “You shall not move me one inch if there is aught to do first that may help Miss Miranda.” “You must lie very still,” warned Betsey. “Indeed and I will,” promised Michael obediently, “but—what is it you are going to do, you two?” They did not stop to explain, so great was their haste. They went clambering over the wall again, and tumbled down the other side upon the grass. The wind, from which they had been sheltered below, caught them again as they ran to the pool. They knelt down at opposite sides of the shallow curve and plunged their arms, shoulder deep, into the tossing water. “I have found something,” exclaimed Betsey almost immediately; “it feels like thin metal blades set in a ring.” She drew her prize, dripping, from the basin and held it up. As she sat back on her heels the wind loosened her hair and flung its dark mass over her shoulder. David, unable to see, took the object in his hand and felt of it carefully. “That is certainly the missing valve,” he pronounced, “so we know now that we are right. The other parts were two steel tubes, about as long as my hand. Those will not be so easy to find. They may have rolled away to the deep end.”