‘I shall hinder you,’ she said, her voice ringing clear and distinct; ’and if you breathe another word against Harold, I’ll turn you from this room.  The Tramp House is mine; Mr. Arthur gave it to me, and you cannot stay in it with me.’

“Heavens and earth! hear the girl!  One would s’pose she was the Queen of Sheby to hear her go on, instead of a beggar, whose father was the Lord only knows who, and whose mother was found in rags on this ’ere table.  Drat the dum thing!” Peterkin roared, bringing his fist down with such force upon the poor old rickety table that it fell to pieces under the blow and went crashing to the floor.

Jerrie’s face was a face to fear then, and Peterkin was afraid, and backed himself out of the room, with Jerrie close to him, never speaking a word, but motioning him to the door, through which he passed swiftly, and picking up his bag, walked rapidly away, growling to himself: 

’There’s the very Old Harry in that gal’s eye.  Bill did well to get shet of her; and yit, if she’d married him, how she would have rid over all their heads!  Well, to be sure, what a dum fool she is!’

CHAPTER XLI.

WHAT JERRIE FOUND UNDER THE FLOOR.

Meantime Jerrie had gone back to the wreck of the table, which she tried to straighten up, handling it as carefully and as reverently as if it had been her mother’s coffin she was touching.  One of the legs had been broken off before, and she and Harold has fastened it on and turned it to the side of the house where it would be more out of the way of harm, and it was this leg which had succumbed first to the force of Peterkin’s fist, and as the entire pressure of the table was brought to bear upon it in falling, it had been precipitated through a hole in the base board, which had been there as long as she could remember the place, not so large at first, but growing larger each year, as the decaying boards crumbled or were eaten away by rats.

Jerrie called it a rat-hole, and had several times put a trap there to catch the marauders, who sometimes scampered across her very feet, so accustomed were they to her presence.  But the rats would not go into the trap, and then she pasted a newspaper over the hole, but this had been torn, and hung in shreds, while the hole grew gradually larger.

Taking up the top of the table, Jerrie dragged it to the centre of the room, and, putting three of the legs upon it, went to search for the fourth, one end of which was just visible at the aperture in the wall.  As she stooped to take it out, a bit of the floor under her feet gave way, making the opening so large that the table leg disappeared from view entirely.  Then Jerrie went down upon her knees, and, thrusting her hand under the floor, felt for the missing leg, striking against stones, and brushes, and bits of mortar, and finally touching something from which she recoiled for an instant, it was so cold and slimy.