"Not yet," rejoined Hester; "I believe if he had he would have been violent."
"Well, Hester," said Peggy, as the girl concluded her strange narrative, "you have cleared up a puzzling mystery."
"Did you ever hear such a yarn in all your born days?" asked Jimsy.
"And every one of the jewels is there," cried Jess. "I tell you what I'll do, I'll just call up the house and tell mother about it. Won't she be pleased?"
But Mrs. Bancroft was not at home, and----
"Oh, miss," gasped the servant, who answered the 'phone, "we're all upset. Morgan has run off, miss, and so has Giles. They took some of the silver with them. Mary and me tried to stop 'em but they pointed a pistol at us and scared us inter high strikes."
"I'll 'phone the police at once," cried Jess, indignantly. "They might have got off if it hadn't been for that."
But although a good description was furnished, Morgan and Giles were not captured and Mr. Bancroft was not ill pleased.
"They will not venture into this part of the country again," he said, "and we are well rid of such rascals."
Hester, in whom Mrs. Bancroft took an interest after the girl had told her with her own lips her strange story, is now at a girls' boarding school, having been sent there at Mrs. Bancroft's expense.
As for Fanning Harding, his father sent him West soon after the lad's innate rascality had been revealed, and from reports Fanning is working hard to redeem the past and make himself a good and useful man.
"And so the mystery of the phantom airship and the missing jewels is all cleared up," said Peggy to Jess one day a short time after the events just described had transpired.
"Yes," rejoined her chum, "and the air seems clearer and fresher somehow. It is terrible to have a dark cloud of suspicion hanging over one."
"It is, indeed," rejoined Peggy; "and now, as Roy leaves in a few days for the West, let's all take a good long spin. You and I will go in the Golden Butterfly while the boys can run along below us in the auto."
"Wouldn't Roy like to go in the aeroplane?" she said.
"Oh, you sly puss," she exclaimed. "Very well, then you and Roy in the Golden Eagle and Jimsy and I in the auto."
"Suits me," cried Jimsy, throwing his arm around his sister's waist, "but I thought you were the girl aviator of the family, Peggy."