“Oh, Jerry Sheming!” cried Ann, running forward.  “You might have shot him with that gun.”

“Not unless I’d loaded it first,” replied Jerry, with a quiet chuckle.  “But you folks scared me quite as much as I did you—­Why, it’s Miss Hicks and Miss Cameron.”

“Where is Ruth?” demanded Ann, anxiously.

“And Tom?” joined in Helen.

“And how did you get back here to Cliff Island?” asked Bob.  “We understood that you’d been railroaded out of the country.”

“Hold on! hold on!” exclaimed Jerry.  “Let’s hear first about Miss Fielding.  Where’s she gone?  How came you folks in this cave?”

Helen was the one who told him.  She related all the circumstances very briefly, but in a way to give Jerry a clear understanding of the situation.

“They’ve wandered off to the right.  I know where they must be,” said Jerry, decidedly.  “I’ll go find them.  And then I’ll get you all out of here.  It has almost stopped snowing now.”

“But how did you find your way back here to the island?” Bob demanded again.

“I ain’t going to be beat by Blent,” declared Jerry Sheming, doggedly.  “I am going to have another look through the caves before I leave for good, and don’t you forget it.

“The engine on that train yesterday morning broke a piston rod and had to stop down the lake shore.  I hopped off and hid on the far bank, watching the island.  If you folks hadn’t come over this way to fish this morning, I’d been across before the storm began.

“I was pretty well turned around in the storm, and have been traveling a long time.  But I got to the brook at last, and then worked my way up it and into the other end of this cave.  I was going up there after my lantern——­”

“Ruth and the others have it,” explained Helen, quickly.

“Then I’ll go find them at once.  I know my way around pretty well in the dark.  I couldn’t get really lost in this cave,” and Jerry laughed, shortly.

“I’ve got matches if you want them,” said Bob.

“Got a plenty, thanks.  You folks go back to your friends, and I’ll hunt out Miss Fielding in a jiffy.”

Jerry turned away at once, and soon passed out of their sight in the gloom.  As Helen and the others hurried back to the anxious party at the campfire, Jerry went straightway to the most satisfactory discovery of all his life.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TREASURE BOX

When Jerry met Ruth and her companions coming slowly from the little cave, the boys bearing the heavy, ironbound box between them, he knew instantly what it was—­his uncle’s chest in which he had kept his money and papers.

“It’s yours to hide again if you want to, Jerry,” Ruth told him, when the excitement of the meeting had passed, and explanations were over.  “It was what both you and Rufus Blent have been looking for, and I believe you have the best right to it”