“Come here, children,” said she.  They glided to her in a moment; and found her eyes fixed upon an object that lay on the knights’ bough.

It was a sparkling purse.

I dare say you have noticed that the bark on the boughs of these very ancient trees is as deeply furrowed as the very stem of an oak tree that boasts but a few centuries; and in one of these deep furrows lay a green silk purse with gold coins glittering through the glossy meshes.

Josephine and Rose eyed it a moment like startled deer; then Rose pounced on it.  “Oh, how heavy!” she cried.  This brought up Dard and Jacintha, in time to see Rose pour ten shining gold pieces out of the purse into her pink-white palm, while her face flushed and her eyes glittered with excitement.  Jacintha gave a scream of joy; “Our luck is turned,” she cried, superstitiously.  Meanwhile, Josephine had found a slip of paper close to the purse.  She opened it with nimble fingers; it contained one line in a hand like that of a copying clerk:  From A friend:  In part payment of A great debt.

Keen, piquant curiosity now took the place of surprise.  Who could it be?  The baroness’s suspicion fell at once on Dr. Aubertin.  But Rose maintained he had not ten gold pieces in the world.  The baroness appealed to Josephine.  She only blushed in an extraordinary way, and said nothing.  They puzzled, and puzzled, and were as much in the dark as ever, when lo! one of the suspected parties delivered himself into the hands of justice with ludicrous simplicity.  It happened to be Dr. Aubertin’s hour of out-a-door study; and he came mooning along, buried in a book, and walked slowly into the group—­started, made a slight apology, and was mooning off, lost in his book again.  Then the baroness, who had eyed him with grim suspicion all the time, said with well-affected nonchalance, “Doctor, you dropped your purse; we have just picked it up.”  And she handed it to him.  “Thank you, madame,” said he, and took it quietly without looking at it, put it in his pocket, and retired, with his soul in his book.  They stared comically at one another, and at this cool hand.  “It’s no more his than it’s mine,” said Jacintha, bluntly.  Rose darted after the absorbed student, and took him captive.  “Now, doctor,” she cried, “be pleased to come out of the clouds.”  And with the word she whipped the purse out of his coat pocket, and holding it right up before his eye, insisted on his telling her whether that was his purse or not, money and all.  Thus adjured, he disowned the property mighty coolly, for a retired physician, who had just pocketed it.

“No, my dear,” said he; “and, now I think of it, I have not carried a purse this twenty years.”

The baroness, as a last resource, appealed to his honor whether he had not left a purse and paper on the knights’ bough.  The question had to be explained by Josephine, and then the doctor surprised them all by being rather affronted—­for once in his life.