Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/205

 having hastily assumed the form of a bunny—or some other fancy equally alluring to an imaginative little being like Margaret Barnard.

One morning, not very far from the top of the hill where the View Tower stood, the emotional Jacky bored his sharp nose, in a state of great nervous excitement, among the gnarled roots of a tree, exposed by the cutting away of thick masses of bracken, which had been done by order of the police immediately after the murder of Lady Hereward.

No creature less energetic and keen of scent than a fox terrier would have suspected the existence of a rabbit-hole under the low arches of the beech tree's gray roots, but Jacky was certain of its existence, and Gaylor encouraged him, as usual.

"Good dog! Have him out!" he cried, as Jacky wildly clawed, and pawed, and nosed his way through the labyrinth of root-barriers. "He knows," the young man explained to Poppet, "that a stolen fairy treasure-chest has been buried there by a wicked gnome, for fairies talk to dogs in dreams. Now, I'll just see if I can reach that treasure-chest with my hand."

"You've never found anything of the fairies yet," Poppet said, reproachfully, "except some of their jewels, which they'd turned into stones before you touched them."

"Even those were better than nothing," argued