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184 "I think so, but I'm not sure. But don't say anything."

"I won't. Oh! I'm only too glad not to have to admit it, though I'm afraid it's only postponing the fatal day. But what have you found?"

"I can't tell you Ruth—just yet. I've got quite a problem to work out. Later on I may need your help."

"Why, can't some of the boys?—oh, I see, you're keeping my secret for me. That's fine of you!"

"Just wait—that's all," was Tom's final advice. In the exuberance of his youth he imagined, that, should it prove that Boswell had bought Ruth's pin from the Mexican, the brooch could, by some means or other, be recovered.

"And now I am up against it," he went on, still communing with himself, after he had left Ruth. "I can't get the boys to help me, so I've got to go alone. And what's the first thing to be done?"

There were several points that needed clearing up.

"In the first place," reasoned Tom, "if Mendez had the brooch, which was in the jewel box, he has, or had, the other things. The question is—has he them yet? If he sold Boswell the pin he may have sold the other articles. I guess the only thing for me to do is to try and get in his