He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.

The paragraph was as follows:

'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make you as glad as I am.'

Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped and irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who said to her:

'What do you think she meant by the something which would make me glad as she was?'

'I don't know,' Jerry answered him. 'Who wrote it? Gretchen?'

'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never went back to see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor little Gretchen! What was the idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this letter, when I heard you sing? It is gone, and I cannot recall it.'

There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the letter away, and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying he was going to write her again, or her friends, and find out what she meant.

The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we have described, and gave him the promise to bring him any letter directed to Germany which Arthur might entrust to her. But the promise weighed heavily upon her as she walked slowly on towards the field where Harold was at work, and where she found him resting for a moment under the shadow of a wide-spreading butternut. He looked tired and pale, and there were great drops of sweat upon his white forehead, and an expression on his face which Jerry did not understand.

Harold was not in a very happy frame of mind. Naturally cheerful and hopeful, it was not often that he gave way to fits of despondency, or repining at his humble lot, so different from that of the boys of his own age, with whom he came in daily contact, both at school and in the town.

Dick St. Claire, his most intimate friend, always treated him as if he were fully his equal, and often stood between him and the remarks which boys made thoughtlessly, and which, while they mean so little, wound to the quick such sensitive natures as Harold's. But not even Dick St. Claire could keep Tom Tracy in check. With each succeeding year he grew more and more supercilious and unbearable, pluming himself upon his position as a Tracy of Tracy Park, and this wealth he was to inherit from his Uncle Arthur. For the last year he had been at Andover, where he had formed a new set of acquaintances, one of whom was spending the vacation with him. This was young Fred Raymond, whose home was at Red Stone Hall, in Kentucky, and whose parents were in Europe. Between the two youths there was but little similarity of taste or disposition, for young Raymond represented all that was noble and true, and though proud of his State and proud of his name, never assumed the slightest superiority over those whom the world considered his inferiors. He was Tom's room-mate, and hence the intimacy between them which had resulted in Fred's accepting the invitation to Tracy Park. If anything had been wanting to complete Tom's estimate of his own importance this visit of the Kentuckian would have done it. All his former friends were cut except Dick St. Claire, while Harold was as much ignored as if he had never existed. Tom did not even see him or recognize him with so much as a look, but passed him by as he would any common day laborer whom he might chance to meet. All through the summer days, while Harold was working until every bone in his body ached, Tom and his friend were enjoying themselves in hunting, fishing, driving, or rowing, or lounging under the trees in the shady lawns.

That afternoon when Jerry joined him in the hayfield, Tom and the Kentuckian had passed him in their fanciful hunting-suits with their dogs and guns, but though Harold was within a few yards of them, Tom affected not to see him, and kept his head turned the other way, as if intent upon some object in the distance.

Leaning upon his rake, Harold watched them out of sight, with a choking sensation in his throat as he wondered if it would always be thus with him, and if the day would never come when he, too, could know what leisure meant, with no thought for the morrow's bread.

'I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he treats me like a dog,' he said, as he seated himself upon the grass, where he sat fanning himself with his straw hat.

When Jerry appeared in view he brightened at once, for in all the world there was not anything half so sweet and lovely to him as the little blue-eyed girl who seated herself beside him, and, nestling close to him, laid her curly head upon his arm.

'I've come to help you rake the hay,' she said, 'for grandma told me you had a headache at noon, and couldn't eat your huckleberry pie. I am awfully sorry, Harold, but I ate it myself, it looked so good, instead of saving it for your supper. It was nasty and mean in me, and I hope it will make me sick.'

But Harold told her he did not care for the pie, and would rather that she would eat it if she liked it. Then he questioned her of the park house and of Arthur; asking if the bees were often in his head now, or had she driven them out.

'No, I guess I haven't. They were awful yesterday and to-day,' Jerry replied. 'He was talking of Gretchen all the time. I wonder who she was. Sometimes I look at her until it seems to me I have seen her or something like her, a paler face with sadder eyes. How he must have loved her, better than you or I could ever love anybody; don't you think so?'

Harold hesitated a moment, and then replied:

'I don't know, but it seems to me I love you as much as a man could ever love another.'

'Phoo! Of course you do; but that's boy love; that isn't like when you are old enough to have a beau!' and Jerry laughed merrily, as she sprang up, and, taking Harold's rake, began to toss the hay about rapidly, bidding him sit still and see how fast she could work in his place.

Harold was very tired, and his head was aching badly, so for a time he sat still, watching the graceful movements of the beautiful child, who, it seemed to him, was slipping away from him. Constant intercourse with a polished man like Arthur Tracy had not been without its effect upon her, and there was about her an air which with strangers would have placed her at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls. This Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest she should grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl he loved so much.

'What if she should think me a clown and a clodhopper, as Tom Tracy does?' he said to himself, as he watched her raking up the hay faster, and quite as well as he could have done himself. 'I believe I should want to die.'

It was impossible that Jerry should have guessed the nature of Harold's thoughts, but once, as she passed near him, she dropped her rake, and going up to him, wiped his forehead with her apron, and, kissing him fondly, said to him:

'Poor, tired boy, is your head awful? You look as if you wanted to vomit? Do you?'

'No, Jerry,' Harold answered, laughingly. 'I am not as bad as that. I was only thinking and wishing that I were rich and could sometime give you and grandma a home as handsome as Tracy Park. How would you like it?'

'First-rate, if you were there,' Jerry replied; 'but if you were not I shouldn't like it at all. I never mean to live anywhere without you; because, you know, I am your little girl, the one you found in the carpet-bag, and I love you more than all the world, and will love and stand by you forever and ever, amen!'

She said the last so abruptly, and it sounded so oddly, that Harold burst into a laugh, and taking up the rake she had dropped, began his work again, declaring that the headache was gone, and that he was a great deal better.

'Forever and ever, amen!' The words kept repeating themselves over and over in Harold's mind as he walked homeward in the gathering twilight with Jerry hip-pi-ty-hopping at his side, her hand in his, and her tongue running rapidly, as it usually did when with him.

She would 'love and stand by him forever and ever, amen!' It was a singular remark for a child, and in after years, when his sky was the blackest, the words would come back to the man Harold like so many stabs as he whispered in his anguish:

'She has forgotten her promise to "stand by me forever and ever, amen!"'



CHAPTER XXI.

MRS. TRACY'S DIAMONDS.

Mrs. Tracy was going to have a party—not a general one, like that which she gave when our readers first knew her, and Harold Hastings stood at the head of the stairs and bade 'the ladies go this way and the gentlemen that.' Since Dolly had become so exclusive and a leader of fashion, she had ignored general parties and limited her invitations to a select few, which, on this occasion, numbered about sixty or seventy. But the entertainment was prepared as elaborately as if hundreds had been expected, and the hostess was radiant in satin and lace, and diamonds, as she received her guests and did the honors of the occasion.

The September night was soft and warm, and the grounds were lighted up, while quite a crowd collected near the house to hear the music and watch the proceedings.

Mrs. Tracy would have liked to have had Jerry in the upper hall, where Harold had once stood.

'It would help to keep the child in her place,' she thought, 'for she is getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence, with so much attention from Arthur.'

But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying that when Jerry Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment it would be as a guest, and not as a waiter. So a colored boy stood in the upper hall, and a colored boy stood in the lower hall, and there were colored waiters everywhere, and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her life: for Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and a judge's wife from Springfield—all guests of Grace Atherton, and, in consequence, bidden to the party.

Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence of Arthur in the parlors. He had known both Governor Markham and his wife, Ethelyn Grant, and had been present at their wedding, and it was mostly on their account that he had consented to join in the festivities. Jerry, it is true, had done a great deal toward persuading him to go down, repeating, in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say with regard to his seclusion from society.

'You just make a hermit of yourself,' she said, 'cooped up here all the time. I don't wonder folks say you are crazy. It is enough to make anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms and see nobody but Charles and me. Just dress yourself in your best clothes and go down and be somebody, and don't talk of Gretchen all the time! I am tired of it, and so is everybody. Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.'

Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and with all the air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed immoderately, and promised her to do his best not to disgrace her, and to appear as if he were not crazy.

Jerry's anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a child whose ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over she took her way to the park house to see that Arthur was dressed properly for the occasion.

'It would be like him to go without his neck-tie and wear his every-day boots,' she thought.

But she found him as faultlessly gotten up as he well could be in his old-fashioned evening dress, which sat rather loosely upon him, for he had grown thinner with each succeeding year.

Jerry thought him splendid, and watched him admiringly as if he left the room and started for the parlors, with her last injunction ringing in her ears:

'Not a word out of your head about Gretchen, but try and act as if you were not crazy.'

'I'll do it, Cherry. Don't you worry,' he said to her, with a little reassuring nod, as he descended the stairs.

And he kept his promise well. There was no word out of his head about Gretchen, and no one ignorant of the fact would ever have suspected that his mind was unsettled as he moved among the guests, talking to one another with that pleasant, courtly manner so natural to him. A very close observer, however, might have seen his eyes dilate and even flash with some sudden emotion when his brother's wife passed him and her brilliant diamonds, his gift, sparkled in the bright gaslight. The setting was rather peculiar, but Mrs. Tracy liked it for the peculiarity, and had never had it changed. She was very proud of her diamonds, they were so large and clear, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that there were no finer, if as fine, in town. She seemed to know, too, just in what light to place herself in order to show them to the best advantage, and at times the gleams of fire from them were wonderful, and once Arthur put his hand before his eyes as she passed him, and muttering something to himself moved quickly to another part of the room. This was late in the evening, and soon after he excused himself to those around him, saying it was not often that he dissipated like this, and as he was growing tired he must say good-night.

The next morning Charles found him looking very pale and worn, with a bad pain in his head. He had rested badly, he said, and would have his coffee in bed, after which Charles was to leave him alone and not come back until he rang for him, as he might possibly fall asleep.

It was very late that morning when the family breakfasted, and as they lingered around the table, discussing the events of the previous night, it was after eleven o'clock when at last Mrs. Tracy went up to her room.

As she ascended the stairs to the upper hall, she caught a glimpse of Harold disappearing through a door at the lower end of the hall, evidently with the intention of going down the back stairway and making his exit from the house by the rear door, rather than the front. Mrs. Tracy knew that he was sometimes sent by his grandmother on some errand to Arthur, and giving no further thought to the matter went on to her own room, which her maid had put in order. All the paraphernalia of last night's toilet were put away, diamonds and all. Contrary to her usual custom, for she was very careful of her diamonds, and very much afraid they would be stolen, she had left them in their box on her dressing bureau. But they were not there now. Sarah, who knew where she kept them, had put them away, of course, and she gave them no more thought until three days later, when she received an invitation to a lunch party at Brier Hill.

'I shall wear my dark blue satin and diamonds,' she said to her maid, who was dressing her hair, but the diamonds, when looked for, were not in their usual place.

Sarah had not put them away, nor in fact had she seen them at all, for they were not upon the bureau when she went to arrange her mistress' room the morning after the party. The diamonds were gone, nor could any amount of searching bring them to light. And they looked everywhere, in every box and drawer and corner, and Mrs. Tracy grew cold and sick and faint, and finally broke down in a fit of crying, as she explained to her husband that her beautiful diamonds were stolen. She called it that, now, and the whole household was roused and questioned as to when and where each had last seen the missing jewels. But no one had seen them since they were in the lady's ears, and she knew she had left them upon her bureau when she went down to breakfast. She was positive of that. No one had been in the room, or that part of the house, except Tom, Fred Raymond, Charles and Sarah. Of these the first two were not to be thought of for a moment, while the last two had been in the family for years, and were above suspicion. Clearly, then, it was some one from outside, who had watched his or her portunity and come in.

Had any one been seen about the house at that hour? Yes, Charles remembered having met Harold Hastings coming out of the rear door; 'but,' he added, 'I would sooner suspect myself than him.'

And this was the verdict of all except Mrs. Tracy, who now recalled the fact that she, too, had seen Harold 'sneaking through the door as if he did not wish to be seen.'

That was the way she expressed herself, and her manner had in it more meaning even than her words.

'What was Harold doing in the house? What was his errand? Does any one know?' she asked, but no one volunteered any information until Charles suggested that he probably came on some errand to Mr. Arthur; he would inquire, he said, and he went at once to his master's room.

Arthur was sitting by his writing-desk, busy with a letter, and did not turn, his head when Charles asked if he remembered whether Harold Hastings had been to his room the morning after the party.

'No, I have not seen him for more than a week,' was the reply.

'But he must have been here that morning,' Charles continued. 'Try and think.'

'I tell you no one was here. I am not quite demented yet. Now go. Don't you see you are interrupting me?' was Arthur's rather savage response, and without having gained any satisfactory information Charles returned to the group anxiously awaiting him:

'Well?' was Mrs. Tracy's sharp interrogatory, to which Charles responded:

'He does not remember what happened that morning; but that is not strange. He was very tired and unusually excited after the party, and when he is that way he does not remember anything. Harold might have been there a dozen times and he would forget it.'

'Bring the boy, then. He will know what he was doing here,' was Mrs. Tracy's next peremptory remark, and her husband said to her, reproachfully:

'Surely you do not intend to charge him with the theft?'

'I charge no one with the theft until it is proven on him; but I must see the boy and know what he was doing here. I never liked this free running in and out of those people in the lane. I always knew something would come of it,' Mrs. Tracy said, and Charles was despatched for Harold.

He found him mowing the lawn for a gentleman whose premises joined Tracy Park, and without any explanation told him that he was wanted immediately at the park house.

'But it is noon,' Harold said, glancing up at the sun. 'And there is Jerry coming to call me to dinner.'

'No; better come at once. Jerry can go with you, if she likes,' Charles said, feeling intuitively that in the little girl Harold would find a champion.

Harold left his lawn mower, and explaining to Jerry, who had come up to him, that he had been summoned to the park house, whither she could accompany him if she chose, he started with her and Charles, whom he questioned as to what was wanted with him.

'Were you in the park house the morning after the party? That would be Wednesday,' Charles asked.

'Yes, I went to see Mr. Arthur Tracy, but could get no answer to my knock,' Harold promptly replied, while his face flushed scarlet, and he seemed annoyed at something. He could not explain to Charles his motive in going to see Arthur, as, now that the first burst of indignation was over, he felt half ashamed of it himself. On the afternoon of the day of the party he had been at Grassy Spring, helping Mrs. St. Claire with her flowers, and after his work was done he had gone with Dick into the billiard-room, where they found Tom Tracy and his friend, young Raymond. They had come over for a game, and the four boys were soon busily engaged in the contest. Harold, who had often played with Dick and was something of an expert, proved himself the most skilful of them all, greatly to the chagrin of Tom, who had not recognized him even by a nod. Dick, on the contrary, had introduced him to Fred Raymond with as much ceremony as if he had been the Governor's son, instead of the boy who sometimes worked in his mother's flower garden. And the Kentuckian had taken him by the hand and greeted him cordially, with a familiar:

'How d'ye do, Hastings? Glad to make your acquaintance'

There was nothing snobbish about Fred Raymond, whose every instinct was gentlemanly and kind, and Harold felt at ease with him at once, and all through the game appeared at his best, and quite as well bred as either of his companions.

When the play was over Dick excused himself a moment, as he wished to speak with his father, who was about driving to town. As he stayed away longer than he had intended doing, Tom grew restless and angry, too, that Fred should treat Harold Hastings as an equal, for the two had at once entered into conversation, comparing notes with regard to their standing in school and discussing the merits of Cicero and Virgil, the latter of which Harold had just commenced.

'We can't wait here all day for Dick,' Tom said. 'Let us go out and look at the pictures.'

So they went down the stairs to a long hall, in which many pictures were hanging—some family portraits and others, copies of the old masters which Mr. St. Claire had brought from abroad. Near one of the portraits Fred lingered a long time, commenting upon its beauty, and the resemblance he saw in it to little Nina St. Claire, the daughter of the house, and whose aunt the original had been. The portrait was not far from the stairway which led to the billiard-room, and Harold, who had remained behind, and was listlessly knocking the balls, could not help hearing all they said:

'By the way, who is that Hastings? I don't think I have seen him before; he is a right clever chap,' Fred Raymond said.

Tom replied, in that sneering, contemptuous tone which Harold knew so well, and which always made his blood boil and his fingers tingle with a desire to knock the speaker down:

'Oh, that's Hal Hastings, a poor boy, who does chores for us and the St. Claires. His grandmother used to work at the park house, and so uncle Arthur pays for his schooling, and Hal allows it, which I think right small in him. I wouldn't be a charity student, anyway, if I never knew anything. Besides that, what's the use of education to chaps like him. Better stay as he was born. I don't believe in educating the masses, do you?'

Of himself Tom could never have thought of all this, but he had heard it from his mother, who frequently used the expression 'not to elevate the masses,' forgetting that she was once herself a part of the mass which she would now keep down.

Just what Fred said in reply Harold did not hear. There was a ringing in his ears, and he felt as if every drop of blood in his body was rushing to his head as he sat down, dizzy and bewildered, and smarting cruelly under the wound he had received this time. He had more than once been taunted with his poverty and dependence upon Mr. Tracy, but the taunts had never hurt him so before, and he could have cried out in his pain as he thought of Tom's words, and knew that in himself there was the making of a far nobler manhood than Tom Tracy would ever know.

Was poverty, which one could not help, so terrible a disgrace, an insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and small in him to accept his education from a man on whom he had no claim? Possibly; and if so, the state of things should not continue. He would go to Arthur Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could receive no more from him; that if he had an education, he must get it himself by the work of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.

Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into the open air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was still throbbing terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward home.

In the lane he saw Jerry coming toward him, with her sun-bonnet hanging down her back and her soft, curly hair blowing around her forehead. The moment she saw him she knew something was the matter, and, hastening her steps to run, asked him what had happened, and why he looked so white and mad.

Harold was sure of sympathy from Jerry, and he told her his story, which roused her to a high pitch of indignation.

'The miserable, nasty, sneaking Tom!' she said, stopping short and emphasizing each adjective with a stamp of her foot as if she were trampling upon the offending Tom. 'I wish I had heard him. I'd have scratched his eyes out! talking of you as if you were dirt! I hate him, and I told him so the other day, and spit at him when he tried to kiss me.'

'Kiss you! Tom Tracy kiss you!' Harold exclaimed, forgetting his own grief in this insult to Jerry; for it seemed to him little less than profanity for lips like Tom Tracy's to touch his little Jerry.

'No, he didn't, but he tried, right before that boy from Kentucky; but I wriggled away from him, and bit him, too, and he called me a cat, and said he guessed I wouldn't mind if you or Dick St. Claire tried to kiss me, and I shouldn't; but I'll fight him and Bill Peterkin every time. I wonder why all the boys want to kiss me so much!'

'I expect it is because you have just the sweetest mouth in the world,' Harold said, stooping down and kissing the lips which seemed made for that use alone.

This little episode had helped somewhat to quiet Harold's state of mind, but did not change his resolve to speak to Mr. Tracy, and tell him that he could not receive any more favors from his hands. He would, however, wait until to-morrow, as Jerry bade him to.

'You will worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon at the party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the park the next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy would see him.

He had rung at the door of the rear hall, but as no one heard him he ventured in, as he had sometimes done before, when sent for Jerry if it rained, and ascending the stairs to the upper hall, knocked two or three times at Arthur's door, first gently, and then louder as there came no response.

'He cannot be there, and I must come again,' he thought as he retraced his steps, reaching the door at the lower end of the hall just as Mrs. Tracy came up the broad staircase on her way to her room.

As that day wore on, and the next, and the next, Harold began to care less for Tom's insult, and to think that possibly he had been hasty in his determination to decline Arthur's assistance, especially as he meant to pay back every dollar when he was a man. He would at all events wait a little, he thought, and so had made no further effort to see Mr. Tracy, when Charles found him, and told he was wanted at the park house.



CHAPTER XXII.

SEARCHING FOR THE DIAMONDS.

They went directly to Mrs. Tracy's room, where they found that lady in a much higher fever of excitement than when she first discovered her loss. All the household had assembled in the hall and in her room, except Arthur, who sat in his library, occasionally stopping to listen to the sound of the many voices, and to wonder why there was much noise.

Tom was there with his friend, Fred Raymond, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Harold, whose face wore a look of wonder and perplexity which deepened into utter amazement as Mrs. Tracy angrily demanded of him what his business was in the hall on Wednesday morning when she saw him sneaking through the door.

'Where had you been, and did you see my diamonds? Somebody has stolen them,' she said, while Harold gazed at her in utter astonishment.

'Somebody stolen your diamonds!' he repeated, without the shadow of an idea that she could in any way connect him with a theft; nor would the idea have come to him at all, if Tom had not said to him with a sneer:

'Better own up, Hal, and restore the property. It is your easiest way out of it.'

Then he comprehended, and had Tom knocked him senseless the effect could not have been greater. With lips as white as ashes and fists tightly clenched, he stood, shaking like a leaf and staring helplessly, first at one and then at another, unable to speak until his eyes fell on Jerry, whose face was a study. She had thrown her head forward and on one side, and was looking intently at Tom Tracy, while her blue eyes flashed fire, and her whole attitude was like that of a tiger ready to pounce upon its prey. And when Harold said faintly, 'Ask Jerry; she knows,' she did pounce upon Tom, not bodily, but with her tongue, pouring out her words so rapidly and mingling with them so much German that it was almost impossible to understand all she said.

'You miserable, good-for-nothing, nasty fellow,' she began. 'Do you dare accuse Harold of stealing! Stealing! You, who are not fit to tie his shoes! And do you want to know why he was here that morning? I can tell you; but no, I won't tell you! I won't speak to you! I'll never speak to you again; and if you try to kiss me as you did the other day, I'll—I'll scratch out every single one of your eyes! You twit Harold for being poor, and call him a charity! What are you but a charity yourself, I'd like to know! Is this your house? No, sir! It is Mr. Arthur's! Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you don't quit being so mean to Harold I'll tell him every single nasty thing I know about you! Then see what he will do!'

As Jerry warmed with her subject, every look, every gesture, and every tone of her voice was like Arthur's, and Frank watched with a fascination which made him forget everything else, until she turned suddenly to him, and in her own peculiar style and language told him why Harold had come to the park house that morning when the diamonds were missing.

'I advised him to come,' she said, with all the air of a grown woman, 'and I said I'd stand by him, and I will, forever and ever, amen!'

The words dropped from her lips the more maturely, perhaps, because she had used them once before with reference to the humiliated boy, to whose pale, set face there came a smile as he heard them again, and stretching out his hand he laid it on Jerry's curly head with a caressing motion which told plainer than words could have done of his affection for and trust in her.

What more Jerry might have said was prevented by the appearance of a new actor upon the scene in the person of Arthur himself. He had borne the noise and confusion as long as he could, and then had rung for Charles to enquire what it meant. But Charles was too much absorbed with other matters to heed the bell, though it rang three times sharply and loudly. At last, as no one came, and the bustle outside grew louder, and Jerry's voice was distinctly heard, excited and angry, Arthur started to see for himself what had happened.

'Oh, Mr. Arthur,' Jerry cried, as she caught sight of him coming down the hall, 'I was just going after you, to come and turn Tom out of doors, and everybody else who says that Harold took Mrs. Tracy's diamonds. She has lost them, and Tom—'

But here she was interrupted by Tom himself, who, always afraid of his uncle, and now more afraid than ever because of the fiery gleam in his eyes, stammered out that he had not accused Harold, nor any one; that he only knew the diamonds were gone and could not have gone without help.

'Do you mean those stones your mother flashed in my eyes that night? Serves her right if she has lost them,' Arthur said, without manifesting the slightest interest or concern in the matter.

But when Jerry began her story, which she told rapidly in German, he became excited at once, and his manner was that of a maniac, as he turned fiercely upon Tom, denouncing him as a coward and a liar, and threatening to turn him out of the house if he dared harbor such a suspicion against Harold Hastings.

'I'll turn you all into the street,' he continued, 'if you are not careful, and bring Harold and Jerry here to live; then see if I can have peace. Diamonds, indeed! what has a poor man's wife to do with diamonds? Gretchen's diamonds, too! If they are lost, search the house, but never accuse Harold again.'

At this paint Arthur wandered off into German, which no one could understand except Jerry, who stood, holding fast to his arm, her face flushed and triumphant at Harold's victory and Tom's defeat; but as the tirade in German went on, she started suddenly forward, and with clasped hands and staring eyes stood confronting Arthur until he had ceased speaking, and with a wave of his hand signified that he was through and his audience dismissed. Jerry, however, did not move, but stood regarding him with a frightened, questioning expression in her face, which was lost upon the spectators, who were too much interested in the all-absorbing topic to notice anyone particularly.

Tom was the first to go away, and his example was followed by all the servants, except Charles, who succeeded in getting his master back to his room and quieting him somewhat, though he kept talking to himself of diamonds, and Paris, and Gretchen, who, he said, should not he wronged.

'I am sorry, Harold, that this thing has happened. I have no idea that you know anything of the matter. I would as soon suspect my own son,' Frank said to Harold, as he was leaving the house.

With this grain of comfort, the boy went slowly home, humiliated and cut to the heart with the indignity put upon him; while Jerry walked silently at his side, never speaking a word until they were nearly home, when she said, suddenly:

'I know where the diamonds are, but I shan't tell now while there is such a fuss;' but Harold was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to pay much attention to the remark, although it recurred to him years after, when the diamonds came up to confront him again.

It did not take long for the whole town to know of Mrs. Tracy's loss. The papers were full of it. The neighbors talked of it constantly, and two detectives were employed to work the matter up and discover the thief, if possible. A thorough search was also made at the park house. Every servant was examined and cross-examined, and all their trunks and boxes searched; every nook and corner and room was gone through in the most systematic order, even to Arthur's apartments. This last was merely done as a matter of form, and to let the indignant servant see that no partiality was shown, the polite officers explained to Arthur, who at first refused to let them in, but who finally opened the door himself, and bade them go where they liked.

Half hidden among the cushions of the sofa from which Arthur had arisen when he let the officers in and to which he returned again, was Jerry, her face pale to her lips and her eyes like the eyes of some haunted animal, when she saw the policemen cross the threshold.

After her return home the previous day she had been unusually taciturn and had taken no part in the conversation relative to the missing diamonds, but just before going to bed she said to Harold:

'What will they do with the one who took the diamonds, if they find him?'

'Send him to state prison,' Harold answered.

'And what do they do to them in state prison?' Jerry continued.

'Cut their hair off; make them eat bread and water and mush, and sleep on a board, and work awful hard,' was Harold's reply, given at random and without the least suspicion why the question had been asked.

Jerry said no more, but the next morning she started for the park house, which she knew was to be searched, and going to Mr. Arthur's room looked him wistfully in the face as she asked in a whisper:

'Are they found?'

'Found! What found?' he said, as if all recollection of the missing jewels had passed entirely from his mind.

'The diamonds; Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; the ones you gave her,' was Jerry's answer.

For a moment, Arthur looked perplexed and bewildered and confused, and seemed trying to recall something which would not come at his bidding.

'I don't know anything about it,' he said at last. 'I don't seem to think of anything, my head is so thick with all the noise there was here yesterday and the tumult this morning. Search-warrants, Charles says, and two strange men driving up so early. Who are they, Jerry?'

'Police, come to search the house; search everybody and everything. Ain't you afraid?' Jerry said.

'Afraid? No: why should I be afraid? Why, child, how white you are, and what makes you tremble so? You didn't take the diamonds,' was Arthur's response, as he drew the little girl close to him and looked into her pallid face.

'Mr. Arthur,' Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being heard, 'if I should give Maude something for her very own, and she should accept and keep it a good while, and then some day I should take it from her, when she did not know it, and hide it, and not give it up, would that be stealing?'

'Certainly. Why do you ask?'

Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question to him she had put to Harold:

'If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send him to state prison?'

'Undoubtedly. They ought to.'

'And cut off his hair?'

She was threading Arthur's luxuriant locks caressingly, and almost pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question, to which he replied, shortly:

'Yes.'

'And make him eat bread and water and mush?'

'Yes; I believe so.'

'And sleep on a board?'

'Yes, or something as bad.'

'And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?'

Now she had in hers Arthur's hands, soft and white as a woman's, and seemed to be calculating how much hard work it would take to blister hands like these.

'Yes, work till his hands drop off,' Arthur said.

With a shudder, she continued:

'I could not bear it: could you?'

'Bear it? No; I should die in a week. Why, what does ail you? You are shaking like a leaf. What are you afraid of?'

'I don't know; only state prison seems so terrible, and they are looking everywhere. What if they should come in here?'

'Come in here? Impossible, unless they break the door down,' Arthur replied; and then Jerry said to him:

'If they do, suppose you lie down and let me cover you with the afghan and cushions?'

'But I don't want to lie down and be smothered with cushions,' Arthur returned, puzzled, and wondering at the excitement of the child, who nestled close to his side and held fast to his hand, as if she were guarding him, or expected him to guard her, while the examination went on outside, and the frightened and angry servants submitted to having their boxes and trunks examined.

At last footsteps were heard on the stairs and the sound of strange voices, mingled with that of Frank, who was protesting against his brother's rooms being entered.

'You will lose every servant you have if we do not serve all alike,' was the answer.

Then Frank knocked at his brother's door and asked admittance.

'We must do it to pacify the servants,' he said, as Arthur refused, bidding him go about him business.

After a little further expostulation Arthur arose, and, unlocking the door, bade them enter and look as long as they pleased and where they pleased.

It was a mere matter of form, for not a drawer or box was disturbed; but Jerry's breath came in gasps, and her eyes were like saucers, as she watched the men moving from place to place, and then looked timidly at Arthur to see how he was taking it. He took it very coolly, and when it was over and the men were about to leave, he bade them come again as often as they liked; they would always find him there ready to receive them, but the diamonds—nix.

This last he said in a low tone as he turned to Jerry, who, the moment they were alone and he had seated himself beside her, put her head on his arm and burst into a hysterical fit of crying.

'Why, Cherry, what is it? Why are you crying so?' he asked, in much concern.

'Oh, I don't know,' the sobbed; 'only I was so scared all the time they were in the room. What if they had found them! What if they should think that—that—I took them, and should send me to prison, and cut off my hair: and make me eat bread and water and mush, which I hate!'

Arthur looked at her a moment, and then with a view to comfort her, said, laughingly:

'They would not send you to prison, for I would go in your stead.'

'Would you? Could you? I mean could somebody go for another somebody, if they wanted to ever go much?' Jerry asked, eagerly, as she lifted her tear-stained face to Arthur's.

Without clearly understanding her meaning, and with only a wish to quiet her, Arthur answered, at random:

'Certainly. Have you never heard of people who gave life for another's? So, why not be a substitute, and go to prison, if necessary?'

'Yes,' Jerry answered, with a long-drawn breath, and the cloud lifted a little from her face.

After a moment, however, she asked, abruptly:

'Suppose the one who took the diamonds will not give them up, and somebody else knows where they are, ought that somebody else tell?'

'Certainly, or be an accessory to the crime,' was Arthur's reply.

Jerry did not at all know what an accessory was, but it had an awful sound to her, and she asked:

'What do they do to an accessory? Punish her—him, I mean—just the same?'

'Yes, of course,' Arthur said, scarcely heeding what she was asking him, and never dreaming of the wild fancy which had taken possession of her.

That one could go to prison in another's stead, and that an accessory would be punished equally with the criminal, were the two ideas distinct in her mind when she at last arose to go, saying to Arthur, as she stood in the door:

'You are sure you are not afraid to have them come here again, if they take it into their heads to do so?'

'Not in the least; they can search my rooms every day and welcome, if they like,' was Arthur's reply.

'Well, that beats me!' Jerry said aloud to herself, with a nod for every word, as she went down the stairs and started for home, taking the Tramp House on her way. 'I guess I'll go in there and think about it,' she said, and entering the deserted building, she sat down upon the bench and began to wonder if she could do it, if worst came to worst, as it might.

'Yes, I could for him, and I'll never tell; I'll be that thing he said, and a substitute, too, if I can,' she thought, 'though I guess it would kill me. Oh, I hope I shan't have to do it! I mean to say a prayer about it, anyway.'

And kneeling down in the damp, dark room, Jerry prayed, first, that it might never be found out, and second, that if it were she might not be called to account as an accessory, but might have the courage to be the substitute, and stand by him forever and ever, amen!'

'I may as well begin to practice, and see if I can bear it,' she thought, as she walked slowly home, where she astonished Mrs. Crawford by asking her to make some mush for dinner.

'Mush! Why, child, I thought you hated it' Mrs. Crawford exclaimed.

'I did hate it,' Jerry replied, 'but I want it now real bad. Make it for me, please. Harold likes it, don't you, Hally?'

Harold did like it very much; and so the mush was made, and Jerry forced herself to swallow it in great gulps, and made up her mind that she could not stand that any way. She preferred bread and water. So, for supper she took bread and water and nothing else, and went up to bed us unhappy and nervous as a healthy, growing child well could be.

She had tried the mush, and the bread and water, and now she meant to try the shorn head, which was the hardest of all, for she had a pride in her hair, which so many had told her was beautiful.

Standing before her little glass, with the lamp beside her, she looked at it admiringly for a while, turning her head from side to side to see the bright ringlets glisten; then, with an unsteady hand the severed, one by one, the shining tresses, on which her tears fell like rain as she gathered them in a paper and put them away, wondering if the prison shears would cut closer or shorter, and wondering if it would make any difference that she was only a substitute, or at most an accessory.

It was a strange idea which had taken possession of her, and a senseless one, but it was terribly real to her, and that little shorn head represented as noble and complete a sacrifice as was ever made by older and wiser people. There was no hard board to sleep upon, and so she took the floor, with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her, wondering the while if this were not a more luxurious couch than convicts, who had stolen diamonds, were accustomed to have.

'Why, Jerry, what have you done?' and 'Oh, Jerry, how you look!' were the ejaculatory remarks which greeted her next morning, when she went down to her breakfast of bread and water, for she would take nothing else.

'Why did you do it?' Mrs. Crawford asked a little angry and a good deal astonished; but Jerry only answered at first with her tears, as Harold jeered at her forlorn appearance and called her a picked chicken.

'Maude's hair is short, and all the girls', and mine was always in my eyes and snarled awfully,' she said at last, and this was all the excuse she would give for what she had done; while for her persisting in a bread and water diet she would give no reason for three or four days. Then she said to Harold, suddenly:

'You told me that the one who stole the diamonds would have to eat bread and water and have his head shaved, and I am trying to see how it would seem—am playing that I am the man, and in prison; but I find it very hard, I don't believe I can stand it. Oh, Harold, do you think they will ever find the diamonds? I am so tired and hungry, and the blackberry pie we had for dinner did look so good!'

'Jerry,' Harold exclaimed, in amazement, and but dimly comprehending her real meaning, 'you are crazy, to be playing you are a convict! And is that what you have been doing?'

'Ye-es,' Jerry sobbed; 'but I can't bear it, and I hope they will not find him,'

'Him! Who?' Harold asked.

'The one who took the diamonds,' she replied.

'And I hope they will. He ought to be found and punished. Think what harm he has done to me by letting them accuse me,' Harold answered, indignantly.

'No, no, Hally,' Jerry replied. 'No one accused you but Tom, and he is meaner than dirt; and if they did think you took them, and if you had to go, I should not let you; I should go in your place. I could do it for you and Mr. Arthur, but for no one else. Oh, I hope they will never find them.'

She put her hands to her head, and looked so white and faint that Harold was alarmed, and took her at once to his mother, who, scarcely less frightened than himself, made her lie down, and brought her a piece of toast and a cup of milk, which revived her a little. But the strain upon her nerves for the last few days, and the fasting on bread and water proved too much for the child, who for a week or more lay up in her little room, burning with fever, and talking strange things at intervals, of diamonds, and state prison, and accessories, and substitutes, the last of which she said she was, assuring some one to whom she seemed to be talking that she would never tell, never!

Every day Arthur came and sat for an hour by her bed, and held her hot hands in his, and listened to her talk, and marvelled at her shorn head, which he did not like. Whatever he said to her was spoken in German, and as she answered in the same tongue, no one understood what they said to each other, though Harold, who understood a few German words, knew that she was talking of the diamonds, and the prison, and the substitute.

'I shall never tell!' she said to Arthur, 'and I shall go! I can bear it better than you. It is not that which makes my headache so. It's—oh, Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good, and I am so sorry about the diamonds—Mrs. Tracy was so proud of them. Can't you contrive to get them back to her? I could, if you would let me. I am thinking all the time how to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head aches so when I think.'

Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that the lost diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy to have them. Occasionally his brows would knit together, and he seemed trying to recall something which perplexed him, and which her words had evidently suggested to his mind.

'Cherry,' he said to her one day when he came as usual, and her first eager question was, 'Have they found them?' 'Jerry, try and understand me. Do you know where the diamonds are?'

Instantly into Jerry's eyes there came a scared look, but she answered, unhesitatingly:

'Yes, don't you?'

'No,' was the prompt reply; 'though it seems to me I did know, but there has been so much talk about them, and you are so sick, that everything has gone from my head, and the bees are stinging me frightfully. Where are the diamonds?'

But by this time Jerry was in the prison, sleeping on a board and eating bread and mush, and Arthur failed to get any satisfaction from her. Indeed, they were two crazy ones talking together, with little or no meaning in what they said. Only this Arthur gathered—that Jerry would be happy if 'Mrs. Tracy had her diamonds again and did not know how they came to her. When this dawned upon him he laughed aloud, and kissing her hot cheek, said to her:

'I see; I know, and I'll do it. Wait till I come again.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when he left Mrs. Crawford's house; there was a train which passed the station at half-past ten, bound for New York, and without returning to the park, Arthur took the train, sending word to his brother not to expect him home until the next day, and not to be alarmed on his account, as he was going to New York and would take care of himself.

Why he had gone Frank could not guess, and he waited in much anxiety for his return. It was evening when he came home, seeming perfectly composed and well, but giving no reason for his sudden journey to the city. His first inquiry was for Jerry, and his second, if anything had been heard of the diamonds. On being answered in the negative, he remarked:

'Those rascally detectives are bunglers, and oftentimes would rather let the culprit escape than catch him. I doubt if you ever see the jewels again. But no matter; it will all come right. Tell your wife not to fret,'

The next morning when Mrs. Tracy went to her room after breakfast she was astonished to find upon her dressing bureau a velvet box with Tiffany's name upon it, and inside an exquisite set of diamonds; not as fine as those she had lost, or quite as large, but white, and clear, and sparkling as she took them in her hand with a cry of delight, and ran with them to her husband. Both knew from whence they came, and both went at once to Arthur, who, to his sister-in-law's profuse expressions of gratitude, replied indifferently:

'Don't bother me with thanks; it worries me. I bought them to please the little girl, who talks about them all the time. She will yet well now, I am going to tell her.'

He found Jerry better, and perfectly sane. She was very glad to see him, though she seemed somewhat constrained, and shrank from him a little, when he sat down beside her. Her first rational question had been for him, and her second for the diamonds; were they found, and if not, were they still looking for them.

'No, they have not found them,' Harold had said, 'and the officers are still hunting for the thief, while the papers are full of the reward offered to any one who will return them. Five hundred dollars now, for Mr. Arthur has added two hundred to the first sum. He has quite waked up to the matter. You know he seemed very indifferent at first.'

'Mr. Arthur offered two hundred more!' Jerry exclaimed. 'Well, that beats me!'

This was Mrs. Crawford's favorite expression, which Jerry had caught, as she did most of the peculiarities in speech and manner of those about her.

'Two hundred dollars! He must be crazy.'

'Of course he is. He don't know what he does or says half the time, and especially since you have been sick,' Harold said.

'Sick!' Jerry repeated, quickly. 'Have I been sick, and is that why I am in bed so late? I thought you had come in to wake me up, and I was glad, for I have had horrid dreams.'

Harold told her she had been in bed since the day of the investigation, when she came from the park house with a dreadful headache.

'And you've been crazy, too, as a loon,' he continued, 'and talked the queerest things about state prison, and hard boards, and bread and water, and accessories, and substitutes, and so on. Seemed as if you thought you were a felon, and a body would have supposed that you had either taken the diamonds yourself or else knew who did, the way you went on by spells.'

'Oh, Harold!' Jerry gasped, while her face grew spotted and the perspiration came out upon her forehead. 'Did I speak anybody's name?'

'No,' Harold replied. 'I could not make you do that. I asked you ever so many times if you knew who took the diamonds, and you said "Yes," but when I asked who it was, you always answered, "Don't you wish you knew?" and that was all I could get out of you. Mr. Arthur was here every day, and sometimes twice a day, but you spoke German to him. Still I knew it was about the diamonds, for I understood that word. He was not here yesterday at all. There, hark! I do believe he is coming now. Don't you know who is said to be near when you are talking about him?'

And, with a laugh, Harold left the room just as Arthur entered it.

'Well, Cherry,' he said to her, as he drew a chair to her bedside, 'Mrs. Crawford tells me the bees are out of your head this morning, and I am glad. I have some good news for you. Mrs. Tracy has some diamonds, and is the happiest woman in town.'

Jerry had not noticed his exact words, and only understood that Mrs. Tracy had found her diamonds.

'Oh, Mr. Arthur, I am so glad!' the cried; and springing up in bed, she threw both arms around his neck and held him fast, while she sobbed hysterically.

'There, there, child! Cherry, let go. You throttle me. You are pulling my neck-tie all askew, and my head spins like a top,' Arthur said, as he unclasped the clinging arms and put the little girl back upon her pillow, where she lay for a moment, pale and exhausted, with the light of a great joy shining in her eyes.

'Did she know where they came from? how did you manage it? Are you sure she did not suspect!' she asked.

'I put them on her dressing-bureau while she was at breakfast,' he replied, 'and when she came up there they were—large solitaire ear-rings and a bar with five stones, not quite as large or as fine as the ones she lost, but the best I could find at Tiffany's. Why, Jerry, what is the matter? You do not look glad a bit. I thought you wanted me to give them to her surreptitiously, and I did,' he continued, as the expression of Jerry's face changed to one of blank dismay and disappointment, and the tears gathered in her eyes.

'I did—I do,' she said; 'but I meant, not new ones, but her very own—the ones you gave her.'

For a moment Arthur sat looking at her with a perplexed and troubled expression, as if wondering what she could mean, and why he had so utterly failed to please her; then he said, slowly:

'The ones I gave her? You make my head swim trying to remember, and the bumble-bees are black-faced, instead of white, and stinging me dreadfully. I wish you would say nothing more of the diamonds. It worries me, and makes me feel as if I were in a nightmare, and I know nothing of them.'

Raising herself on her elbow and pointing her finger toward him in a half beseeching, half threatening way, Jerry said:

'As true as you live and breathe, and hope not to be hung and choked to death, don't you know where they are?'

This was the oath which Jerry's companions were in the habit of administering to each other in matters of doubt, and she now put it to Arthur as the strongest she knew.

'Of course not,' he answered, with a little irritation in his tone. 'What ails you, Cherry? Are you crazy, like myself? Struggle against it. Don't let the bees get into your brain and swarm and buzz until you forget everything. You ought to remember; you do things you ought not to do. It is terrible to be crazy and half conscious of it all the time—conscious that no one believes what you say or holds you responsible for what you do.'

'Don't they?' Jerry asked, eagerly, for she knew the meaning of the word 'responsible.' 'If a crazy man or woman took the diamonds, and then forgot, and did not tell, and it was ever found out, wouldn't they be punished?'

'Certainly not,' was the reassuring reply, 'Don't you know how many murders are committed and the murderer is not hung, because they say he is crazy?'

In a moment the cloud lifted from Jerry's face, which grew so bright that Arthur noticed the change, and said to her:

'You are better now, I see, and I must go before I undo it all. Good-bye, and never say diamonds to me again; it gets me all in a—m a—well, a French pickle—mixed, you know.'

He kissed her tenderly, and promising to take her for a drive as soon as she was able, went out and left her alone, wondering why it was that his having given the diamonds to his sister-in-law had failed in its effect upon her, and upon himself, too.

For a long time after he was gone Jerry lay thinking with her eyes closed, so that if Harold or her grandmother came in they would think her asleep. Mr. Arthur was certainly crazy at times—very crazy. She could swear to that, and so could many others. And if a crazy man was not responsible for his acts, then he was not, and the law would not touch him; but with regard to the accessory, she was not sure. If that individual were not crazy, why, then he or she might be punished; and as the taste she had had of bread and water, and hard boards, in the shape of the floor, was not very satisfactory, and as Mrs. Tracy had other diamonds in the place of the lost ones, she finally determined to keep her own counsel and never tell what she had heard Arthur say that morning when the theft was discovered and he had talked so fast in German to her and to himself. If she had known where the diamonds were she might have managed to return them to their owner. But she did not know, and her better course was to keep quiet, hoping that in time Mr. Arthur himself would remember and make restitution; for that he had forgotten and was sincere in saying that he knew nothing of them she was certain, and her faith in him, which for a little time had been shaken, was restored.

With this load lifted from her mind Jerry's recovery was rapid, and when the autumnal suns were just beginning to tinge the woodbine on the Tramp House and the maples in the park woods with scarlet, she took her accustomed seat in Arthur's room and commenced her lessons again with Maude, who had missed her sadly and who would have gone to see her every day during her sickness if her mother had permitted it.



CHAPTER XXIII.

ARTHUR'S LETTER.

Two weeks had passed since Jerry's return to her lessons, and people had ceased to talk of the missing diamonds, although the offered reward of $500 was still in the weekly papers, and a detective still had the matter in charge, without, however, achieving the slightest success. No one had ever been suspected, and the thief, whoever he was, must have been an expert, and managed the affair with the most consummate skill. Now that she had another set, Mrs. Tracy was content, and peace and quiet reigned in the household, except so far as Arthur was concerned. He was restless and nervous, and given to fits of abstraction, which sometimes made him forget the two little girls, one of whom watched him narrowly; and once when they were alone and he seemed unusually absorbed in thought, she asked him if he were trying to think of something.

'Yes,' he said, looking up quickly and eagerly; 'that is it. I am trying to remember something which, it seems to me, I ought to remember; but I cannot, and the more I try, the farther it gets from me. Do you know what it is?'

Jerry hesitated a moment, and then she asked:

'Is it the diamonds?'

'Diamonds! No. What diamonds? Didn't I tell you never to say diamonds to me again? I am tired of it,' he said, and in his eyes there was a gleam which Jerry had never seen there before when they rested upon her. It made her afraid, and she answered, meekly:

'Then I cannot help you to remember.'

'Of course not. No one can,' Arthur replied, in a softened tone. 'It is something long ago, and has to do with Gretchen.'

Then suddenly brightening, as if that name had been the key to unlock his misty brain, he added;

'I have it; I know; it has come to me at last! Gretchen always sets me right. I wrote her a letter long ago—a year, it seems to me—and it has never been posted. Strange that I should forget that; but something came up—I can't tell what—and drove it from my mind.'

As he talked he was opening and looking in the drawer which Jerry had never seen but once before, and that when he took from it the letter in German, a paragraph of which he had bidden her read.

'Here it is!' he said, joyfully, as he took out a sealed envelope and held it up to Jerry. 'This is the letter which you must post to-day. I can trust it to you.'

He gave her the letter, which she took with a beating heart and a sense of shame and regret as she remembered her pledge to Mr. Frank Tracy. She had promised to take him any letter which Mr. Arthur might intrust to her care, and if she took this one from Arthur she must keep her word.

'Oh, I can't do it—I can't! It would be mean to Mr. Arthur,' she thought; and returning him the letter, she said: 'Please post it yourself; then you will be sure, and I might lose it, or forget. I am careless sometimes. Don't ask me to take it.'

She was pleading with her might; but Arthur paid no heed, and only laughed at her fears.

'I know you will not forget, and I'd rather trust you than Charles. Surely, you will not refuse to do so small a favor for me?'

'No,' she said, at last, as she put the letter in her pocket, with the thought that, after all, there might be no harm in showing it to Mr. Frank, who, of course, merely wished to see it, and would not think of keeping it.

But she did not know Frank Tracy or guess how great was his anxiety lest any message should ever reach a friend of Gretchen, if friend there were living. She found him in the room he called his office, where the dead woman had lain in her coffin, and where he often sat alone thinking of the day when the inquest was held, and when he took his first step in the downward road, which had led him so far that now it seemed impossible to turn back, even had he wished to do so, as he sometimes did.

'If I had never secreted the photograph, or the book with the handwriting, if I had shown them to Arthur, everything would have been so different, and I should have been free,' he was thinking, when Jerry knocked timidly at the door, rousing him from his reverie, and making him start with a nameless tsar which was always haunting him.

'Oh, Jerry, it is you,' he said, as the little girl crossed the threshold, and shutting the door, stood with her back against it, and her hands behind her. 'What is it?' he asked, as he saw her hesitating.

With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to his mind, Jerry replied:

'I came to tell you that Mr. Arthur has written the letter.'

'What letter?' Frank asked, for the moment forgetting the conversation he had held with the child in the Tramp House.

'The one I promised to bring you to show you—the one to Germany,' was Jerry's answer.

And then Frank remembered at once what, in the excitement of the diamond theft, had passed from his mind.

'Yes, yes, I know; give it to me,' he said, advancing rapidly toward her, and putting out his hand. 'When did he write it? Give it to me, please.'

'But not to keep,' Jerry said, struck by something in his face and manner which, it seemed to her, meant danger to the letter.

'Let me see it,' he continued.

And rather reluctantly Jerry handed him a bulky letter, the direction of which covered nearly the whole of one side of the envelope.

Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as well have been in the Fiji language for any idea it conveyed to him.

'To whom is it directed? I cannot read German,' he said

'I don't know,' Jerry replied. 'I have not looked at it, and would rather not.'

'Why, what a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily. 'What possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do it, and any one who took it to the office would do it if he could.'

This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him, while he held the letter a little way from her, Jerry read the address in German first, then, as he said to her: 'I don't understand that lingo, put it into English,' she read again:

'To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends; or to the postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A.'

'Marguerite—Marguerite Heinrich!' Frank repeated, 'That is not Gretchen. The letter is not to her.'

'I guess it is,' Jerry replied. 'He told me once that Gretchen was a pet name for Marguerite.'

'Yes,' Frank returned, with a sigh, as this little crumb of hope was swept away, while to himself he added: 'At all events it is not Marguerite Tracy, and that makes me less a scoundrel than I should otherwise be. If he had written a little more it would have run over to the other side of the envelope. Any one would know he was crazy,' he continued, with a sickly attempt at a smile, while Jerry stood waiting to take the letter from him.

He knew she was waiting, and said to her, as he put it in his pocket:

'Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some nonsense which ought not to go, even if the sending it would do no harm, as it certainly would.'

Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the letter to go at all. She had remembered her promise to take it to him, and forgotten that he had said it must not be sent lest it should do harm to Maude. But it all came back to her now, and her tears fell like rain as she stood for a moment irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every other feeling. Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.

'Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?' she said, at last, in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was so like him when on his dignity.

And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with, and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly and naturally:

'Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you in the Tramp House I thought that it must not be sent, but I have changed my mind since then, and do not care. I am going to the office, and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I shall be in time for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so worried. Do you take me for a villain?'

He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and perplexed, and only half reassured.

'If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it amounted to that,' Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward the highway which led to the town.

Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing so much that he knew its contents.

'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can,' he said, as he put it again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her. 'I'll see how I feel when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted from his horse before the door of the post-office.

The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his riding-whip.

'I must decide soon,' he thought, when a voice not far from him caught his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in, portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days of the 'Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond ring. To him Peterkin was saying:

'There, that's him—that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town—lives in that handsome place I was telling you about.'

Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin should have inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom strangers cared to see, and Jerry's chance was lost again.

'Here is your mail, Mr. Tracy,' the postmistress said; and stepping forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as Peterkin slapped him on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity which made Frank want to knock him down, called out:

'Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me introduce you to Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; used to drive hosses for me in the days I ain't ashamed of, by a long shot. He's bought him a place out from Philadelphy, and wants to lay it out a la—a la—dumbed if I know the word, but like them old chaps' gardens in Europe, and I told him of Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the country. Will you let us go over it and take a survey?'

'Certainly; go where you like,' Frank said, struggling to reach the door; but Peterkin button-holed him and held him fast, while he continued:

'I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?'

'Nothing,' was the reply.

'Didn't hunt in the right quarter,' Peterkin continued, 'leastwise didn't foller it up, or you'd a found 'em without so much advertisin'.'

'What do you mean?' Frank asked.

'Oh, nothin',' Peterkin replied; 'only them diamonds never went off without hands, and them hands ain't a thousand miles from the park.'

'Perhaps not,' Frank answered, mechanically, more intent upon getting away than upon what Peterkin was saying.

He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his horse, he said, as if speaking to some one near him:

'Well, old fellow, I've done it again, and sunk myself still lower. You are bound to get me now some day, unless I have a death-bed repentance and confess everything. The thief was forgiven at the last hour, why not I?'

The black shadow which Frank felt sure was beside him, did not answer, though he could have sworn that he heard a chuckle as he rode on, fast and far, until his horse was tired and he was tired, too. Then he began to retrace his steps, so slowly that it was dark when, he reached the village, and took the road which led by the gate through which the woman had passed to her death on the night of the storm. It was the shortest route to the park, and he intended to take it.

As he drew near to the gate, it seemed to him that there was something on the wide post nearest the fence which had not been there in the afternoon when he rode by—something dark, and large, and peculiar in shape, and motionless as a stone. He was not by nature a coward, and once he had no belief in ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he did not know what he believed, and this object, whose outline, seen against, the western sky, where a little dim light was lingering, seemed almost like that of a human form, made his heart beat faster than its wont, and he involuntarily checked his horse, just as a clear, shrill voice called out:

'Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I'm so cold sitting here. Did you post the letter?'

It was Jerry who, after he had left her in his office, had been seized with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the letter after all. It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not really think that she did doubt him; still she would feel happier if she knew, and after supper was over she started along the grassy road until she reached the gate. Here she waited a long time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she walked up and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top of the gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way to town, she had frequently sat for a while. It was very cold and tiresome waiting there, and she was beginning to get impatient and to wonder if it could be possible that he had gone home by some other road, when she heard the sound of a horse's hoofs and felt sure he was coming.

'Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!' Frank said, as he reined his horse close up to her. 'Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home.'

She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from the gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms around Frank's waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she felt a little afraid.

'Did you post the letter?' she asked again, as they left the gate behind them and struck into the lane.

To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without hesitation:

'Of course. Did you think I would forget it?'

'No,' Jerry answered. 'I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure, because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don't you think so?'

She emphasized the 'steal,' and the 'lie,' and the 'sneak,' and the 'mean,' with a kick that made the horse jump a little and quicken his steps.

'Yes,' Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and more too, and the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.

'That's so,' Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a slight tightening of her arm around the conscience-stricken man, who wondered if he should ever reach the cottage and be free from the clasp of those arms, which seemed to him like bands of fire burning to his soul. 'I'd never speak to him again,' Jerry continued, 'and Mr. Arthur wouldn't either. He is so right-up, and hates a trick. I don't believe, either, that any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If there does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I shall ask him, and he once told me he would do anything for me, because I look as he thinks Gretchen must have looked when she was a little girl like me.'

They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found Harold in the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry, whose protracted absence at that hour had caused them some anxiety, even though they were accustomed to her long rambles by herself and frequent absences from home. It was not an unusual thing for her to linger in the Tramp House, even after dark, talking to herself, and Gretchen, and Mah-nee, and her mother and a sick woman, whose face was far back in the past. She was there now, Harold supposed, and this belief was confirmed when Mr. Tracy said to him:

'You see I have picked up your little girl and brought her home. Jump down, Jerry, and good-night to you.'

She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping toward home, saying to himself:

'I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance now. I have told too many lies for that, and more than all, must go on lying to the end. I have sold my soul for a life of luxury, which after all is very pleasant,' he continued, as he drew near the house, which was brilliantly lighted up, while through the long windows of the drawing-room he could see the table, with its silver and glass and flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the hearth of the fire-place, which Dolly had persuaded Arthur to have built. There was every kind of bric-a-brac on the tall mantel, and Frank saw it as he passed, and saw the colored man moving slowly about the room after the manner of a well-trained servant who understands his business. There was company staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, from Kentucky, father and mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, and Grace Atherton, and Squire Harrington had been invited to dinner, and were already in the dining-room when Frank entered it after a hasty toilet.

He had been out in the country and ridden further than he had intended, he said by way of apology, as he greeted his guests, and then took Mrs. Raymond into dinner, which, with the exception of the soup and fish, was served from side tables. This was Dolly's last new kink, as Frank called it, and Dolly was very fine, in claret velvet, with her new diamonds, which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton declaring that she liked them quite as well as the stolen ones, whose setting was rather passe.

'That is just why I liked them so, because they were old-fashioned; it made them look like heir-looms, and showed that one had always had a family,' Dolly said.

Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a little, and thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly, when she entered through the kitchen and the lady entertained her in her working-apron!

Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron, and was very bright and talkative, and entertaining, and all the more so because of her husband's silence. He was given to moods, and sometimes aggravated his wife to desperation when he left all the conversation to her.

'Do talk,' she would say to him when they were alone. 'Do talk to people and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle between your eyes as if you were mad at something; and do laugh, too, when anybody tells anything worth laughing at, and not leave it all to me. Why, I actually giggle at times until I feel like a fool, while you never smile or act as if you heard a word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my eyebrows—so—brace up and say something, if it isn't so cunning.'

This elevating of the eyebrows and bracing up were matters of frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted, and now after he had sat through a funny story told by Mr. St. Claire and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly caught Dolly's eye and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were up as marks of unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess of what he was thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes seemingly half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his head was high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning to Mrs. Raymond he began to talk rapidly and at random. She had just returned from Germany, where she had left her daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her of the country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met or heard of anyone by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.

Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it was there her daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic in her praises of the beautiful town. But she had never seen or heard of Marguerite Heinrich, or of anyone by the name of Heinrich.

'Marguerite Heinrich?' Dolly repeated. 'Who in the world is she—and where did you know her?'

'I never did know her. I have only heard of her,' Frank replied, again lapsing into a silence from which he did not rouse again.

He was thinking of the letter hidden away with the photograph and the book—of the lies he had told since his deception began, and now sure it was that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. When he was a boy he had often listened, with the blood curdling in his veins, to a story his grandmother told him with sundry embellishments, for he was not well versed in German literature, of a man—Foster it seemed to him was the name—who sold his soul to the devil in consideration that for a certain number of years he was to have every pleasure the world could give. It had been very pleasant listening to the recital of the fine things the man enjoyed, for Satan kept his promise well; but the boy's hair had stood on end as the story neared its close, and he heard how, when the probation was ended, the devil came for his victim down the wide-mouthed chimney, scattering bricks and fire-brands over the floor, as he carried the trembling soul out in the blackness of the stormy night.

Strangely enough this story came back to him now, and notwithstanding the horror of the thing he laughed aloud as he glanced up at the tall oak fire-place, wondering if it would be that way he would one day go with his master, and seeing in fancy Dolly's dismay when the tea-cups, and saucers, and vases, and plaques, came tumbling to the floor as he disappeared from sight in a blue flame, which smelled of brimstone.

It was a loud, unnatural laugh, but fortunately for him it came just as Grace Atherton had set the guests in a roar with what she was saying of the Peterkin's final struggle to enter society, and so it passed unnoticed by most of them. But that night in the privacy of his room, where Dolly delivered most of her lectures, she again upbraided him with his taciturnity, telling him that he never laughed but once, and then it sounded more like a groan than a laugh.

'You have hit the nail on the head this time, for it was a groan,' Frank said, as he plunged into bed; and Dolly, as she undressed herself deliberately, and this time put her diamonds carefully away, little dreamed what was passing in the mind of the man, who, all through the long hours of the night, lay awake, seldom stirring lest he should disturb her, but repeating over and over to himself, the words:

'Lost now forever and ever, but if Maude is happy I can bear it.'



CHAPTER XXIV.

JERRIE—NINE YEARS LATER.

She spelled her name with an ie now, instead of a y. She was nineteen years old; she had been a student at Vassar for four years, together with Nina St. Claire and Ann Eliza Peterkin, and in July was to be graduated with the highest honors of her class. In her childhood, when we knew her as little Jerry, she had been very small, but at the age of twelve she suddenly shot up like an arrow, and had you first seen her, with her back to you, you might have said she was very tall, but had you waited till she turned her face toward you, or walked across the floor, you would have thought that if an eighth of an inch were taken from her height it would spoil her splendidly developed form. Her school companions called her the Princess, she was so tall and straight, and graceful in every movement, with that sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts to her and made her a general favorite. Whether she spelled her name with an ie or a y and stood five feet six or four feet five, she was the same Jerry who had defended Harold against Tom Tracy, and been ready to go to prison, if need be, for Mr. Arthur. Frank, unselfish, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil Jerrie, not even the adulation of her friends or the looking-glass which told her she was beautiful, just as Nina St. Claire told her every day.

'Yes; I am not blind, and I know that I am rather good-looking,' she once said to Nina, 'and I am glad, for, as a rule, people like pretty things better than ugly ones, but I am not an idiot to think that looks are everything, and I don't believe I am very vain. I used to be though, when a child, but Harold gave me so many lectures upon vanity that I should not do credit to his teachings were I now to be proud of what I did not do myself.'

'But Harold thinks you are beautiful,' Nina replied.

'He does? I did not know that. When did he say so?' Jerrie asked; with kindling eyes and a quick, sideways turn of her head, of which she had a habit when startled by some sudden emotion.

'He said so last vacation, when we were home, and I had that little musicale, and you played and sang so divinely, and wore that dress of baby-blue which Mr. Arthur gave you, with the blush-rose, in your belt.' Nina said; 'I was so proud of you and so was mamma and Mrs. Atherton. You remember there were some New Yorkers there who were visiting Mrs. Grace, and I was glad for them to know that we had some talent, and some beauty, too, in the country; and Harold was proud, too. I don't think he ever took his eyes off you from the time you sat down to the piano until you left it, and when I said to him, "Doesn't she sing like an angel, and isn't the lovely?" he replied: "I think my sister Jerry has the loveliest face I ever saw, and that blue dress is very becoming to her."'

'Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his sister?' Jerry said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she walked away, leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.

Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling softly the air 'He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon to tie up my bonny brown hair,' and could she have looked into Jerry's room she would have seen her standing before the mirror examining the face which Harold had said was the loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same, and their sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom Tracy, and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from Kentucky, who was supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry cared little for the compliments of either Fred or Dick, while those of Tom she scorned and those of Billy she ridiculed. One word of commendation from Harold was worth more to her than the praises of the whole world besides. But Harold had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather more given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether suit the young lady.

As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was seventeen when the dream came—the old, old story which transformed her from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he did not always make a return.

Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry, he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of himself made him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did feel. He would rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or kinder toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could not understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.

Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, who had passed from him to Vassar, and he would have kept it with Harold, if the latter had permitted it. But the boy's pride and independence had asserted themselves at last. He had accepted the course at Andover, and one year at Harvard, on condition that he should be allowed to pay Arthur back all he had received as soon as he was able to do it. As he entered Harvard in advance, he was a junior when he decided to care for himself, and during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during the summer vacation—teaching school for months at a time—and in the college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and compelling obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few who were aware of his limited means, and his efforts to increase them, had to acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude, delivering the valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by his graceful gestures and thrilling eloquence, that he was not only an orator, but every inch a gentleman.

His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced to his clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare coat and shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous as he pursued his studies in the class-room, but which were now concealed by the gown he wore over them. They saw only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled features, and the manly form. But as they listened to the burning words which showed so much clear, deep thought, they said to each other:

'The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as that could move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob that ever surged through the streets of mad Paris.'

Jerry was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's speech was over, and the building was shaking with applause, and flowers were falling around him like rain, she, too, stood up and cheered so loudly that a Boston lady, who sat in front of her, and who thought any outward show of feeling vulgar and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and reprovingly. But in her excitement Jerry did not see the disapprobation in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook for enquiry, and she answered eagerly:

'That's Harold—that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of him!'

And leaning forward so that a curl of her bright hair touched the Boston woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies which she had herself gathered that day on the river at home, before the sun was up, and while the white petals were still folded in sleep. For Jerry had come down on the early train to see Harold graduated, and Maude had found her in the crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy as herself to see Harold thus acquit himself.

Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a fabulous price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market. Harold had seen both the roses and the lilies long before they fell at his feet. It was a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him that it sweet perfume from the latter reached him with the brightness of Jerry's eyes. He knew just where the lilies came from, for he had often waded out to the green bed when the water was low to get them for Jerry; and all the time he was speaking there was in his heart a thought of the old home, and the woods, and the river, and the tall tree on the bank, with the bench beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned, eager face he saw above the sea of heads confronting him.

Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than that of all the rest; for he knew that, though she would be very lenient toward him, she was a keen and discriminating critic, and would detect a weakness which many an older person would fail to see. But she was satisfied—he was sure of that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt it would have been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he stood receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked her way through the crowd and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him fondly, and bursting into a flood of tears as she told him how proud she was of him.

The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though Harold felt a thrill of keen delight run through his veins at the touch of Jerrie's lips, he would a little rather she had waited until they were alone.

'There, there, Jerrie, that will do!' he whispered, as he unclasped her arms, and put her gently from him, though he still held her hand. 'Don't you see they are all looking at us.'

With a sudden, jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and stepped back into the crowd, her heart beating wildly, and her cheeks burning with shame, as she thought what she had done and how it must have mortified Harold.

Maude was speaking to him now—Maude with her bright black eyes and brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that peculiar smile of his which made him so attractive. But the lilies were nowhere to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and bouquets bearing his name were piled together, the lilies were not there.

'He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at all, and I might as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up at four o'clock and risked my neck to get them. He likes Maude and her roses better than he does me,' Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart and all through the journey home—for they returned that night—she was very quiet and tactiturn, letting Maude do all the talking, and saying when asked why she was so still, that her head was aching, and that she was too tired and sleepy to talk.

That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms around Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had come to her like a blow how much he was to her, and, as she believed, how little she was to him.

'Maude is preferred to me—I see it now so plainly; he likes me well enough, but he loves her—I saw it in the way he looked at her that time I mortified him so dreadfully with my gush,' she thought; and although of all her girl friends, not even excepting Nina St. Claire, Maude was the nearest and dearest, she was half-glad when a week or two later, Maude said good-bye to her, and with her mother sailed away to Europe, where she remained for more than a year and a half.

During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly, and Jerrie never failed to write whatever she thought would please her friend to hear of Harold; and when at last Maude returned, and wrote to Jerrie of failing health, and wakeful nights, and lonely days, and her longing for the time when Jerrie would be home, and be with her, and read to her, or recite bits of poetry, as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every jealous, selfish thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold urged him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever she wished him to do so.

'You have such a splendid voice, and read so well,' she wrote, 'that it will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her from being so lonely; so offer your services if she does not ask for them—that's a good boy.'

Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally, she thought:

'He never can be happy with her as she is now. A girl who cannot do a sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad, thought only of Rome as a good place in which to buy sashes and ribbons, and who asked me in a letter to tell her who all those Caesars were, and what the Forum was for, is not the wife for a man like Harold, and however much he might love her at first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless he can bring her up. Possibly he can.'