search. This finally decided the matter. Both Lady Melville and Sir Geoffrey looked excessively pleased, and agreed that it should be as the boys wished. Sir Geoffrey explained the exact route he had taken; and as Bertie Fuller knew the woods well, it was very easy to make him understand every path that had been traversed, while all five boys were thoroughly acquainted with the little market-town of Hartwell. So, perhaps, the baronet could not have met with better seekers of his property; certainly there never were more willing volunteers on any mission.

'I think we had better divide, and go in parties,' said Frank, a few minutes after they had left the Grange. 'Ben and I walked with Sir Geoffrey as he was coming home, so we will take that path, and you other fellows may just as well go the way he said he went into. Hartwell. We shall make sure then of searching every bit of the way; one of us must find the pocket-book then.'

Unless some one else has been beforehand with us,' said Fuller; 'but I think it will be a

good plan to go in two parties, so as soon as we reach the wood we part company, eh?'

'All right,' agreed the rest; so the division speedily took place, each boy secretly hoping to be the lucky finder of the lost treasure.

I expect those gipsies have taken it,' said Ben Lawrence, after they had crossed the best part of the wood.

'How could they have got hold of it?' said Frank scornfully. 'You know, Ben, Sir Geoffrey said they were off early this morning, so how could they pick up what he never lost until hours after ?'

Ben laughed, but privately stuck to his own notions. He was very simple in many of his ideas, and had not yet lost his nursery horror of gipsies. There was nothing too bad or too unlikely for them to do, he thought, but did not like to say so aloud.

Presently they reached the outskirts of Hartwell, coming to a spot where the high road diverged into three branches. At the corner of the widest, stood a guide-post pointing to Hartwell; but this road they were not to take,

as Mr. Smith's dwelling was some way out of the town, and which of the other lanes was the right one they could not remember,-Frank persisting that their host had directed them to take the left, while Ben was equally obstinate about the right-hand path.

'Very well, then,' said Frank at last, 'you go that way, and I'll go this.'

'No, no. Why not ask some one to tell us which is the right road?' suggested Ben. 'I see a man over there; he can tell us, I daresay.'

Frank readily agreed, and ran up to the individual in question, and inquired if he could direct them to 'The Laurels,' Mr. Smith's house.

The man replied in surly tones that he knew 'precious little about Mr. Smith or any other Mister in the place; but there was a decent house up yonder' (indicating the direction which Frank had declared the right one), 'and maybe that was the one they wanted.' He then added, in piteous, beggar-like tones, a request that 'the kind young gentlemen would give him just a copper, to buy a bit of bread, for he had tasted nothing since yesterday.'