“Some one of the crowd must have taken them,” Roy said, with conviction, when they ended their search and sat down upon a fallen tree to rest. “Yes, somebody took them here, and I will not leave California till I know who the thief is. I believe I’ll send for Converse. I suppose he could visit the valley like any ordinary person, and keep his eyes open. The diamonds were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day.” “And when is that to be?” Tom asked. Roy was not sure, but some time between Christmas and New Years. “I hope she will have them by that time,” Tom said, throwing down the stick with which he had been poking in the grass and bushes, and going back to the buggy preparatory to returning home. It was rather a silent drive, for they were both tired and a shadow had come over both, distrust on Roy’s side, and on Tom’s a dread of what the hot-headed young man might do. It was the second time he had mentioned Converse, the Boston detective, and Tom felt that his sin might be finding him out, and saw no escape from it except by suicide, of which he had thought more than once, but had always put the tempter behind him, with a vehemence which kept him at bay. His Ridgefield training had not wholly lost its effect, nor the advice Alice Tracy had given him when she gathered lilies with him on the river or tramped through the woods to visit the hornet’s nest and the turtle bed in the pond. Those days were very vivid to him now with Alice’s son beside him and a look like her in his face and blue eyes. He liked the boy, as he designated him, and was still a little afraid of him or what he might do. Roy, on his part, was thinking, “A first-rate fellow whom I can’t help liking, any more than I can help putting things together, but if he is bad so is Mr. Hilton, and on Fanny’s account I’d better keep quiet.” In this state of mind they reached the cottage where they found Fanny waiting for them on the piazza, greatly excited and alarmed. “Inez is much worse,” she said, “and wants to see Roy alone.” CHAPTER XV. AT THE LAST. Inez had been better that morning and had asked to sit in her chair near the window where she could look out upon the mountains and the valley. Fanny was brushing her hair and talking to her, when she asked, as she often did, “Where is Tom?” “Gone to drive with Roy,” Fanny said. “I believe they were going as far as the scene of the hold-up. Roy is anxious to see the place, and look for my diamonds. But it is of no use. If Tom can’t find them, he can’t.” “The diamonds? What diamonds?” Inez asked quickly.