As he did so he saw peeping from a fold of the silk handkerchief the corner of the tortoise-shell box which he remembered so well, and the sight of which brought back all the shame and humiliation and pain of that memorable morning when he had been suspected of taking it.

‘What is it?  What have you in your hand?’ he asked.

Then Jerrie’s face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her eyes had in them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word, she laid the box in his hand, and then stood watching him is he opened it.

Harold’s face was whiter than Jerrie’s had been, and his voice trembled as he said, in a whisper: 

‘Mrs. Tracy’s diamonds!’

‘Yes, Mrs. Tracy’s diamonds,’ Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on the Mrs. Tracy.

‘How came you by them, and where did you find them,’ Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery eyes confronting him.

’I can’t tell you now.  Put them up quick.  Don’t let any one see them.  Somebody is coming,’ Jerrie said, hurriedly, as her ear caught a sound and her eye an object which Harold neither saw nor heard as he mechanically thrust the box into his side pocket and then turned just as Tom Tracy came up on horseback.

‘Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!’ he cried, dismounting quickly and throwing the bridle-rein over his arm.  ‘And so you are off to that suit?’ he continued, addressing himself to Harold.  ’By George, I wish I were a witness.  I’d swear the old man’s head off; for, upon my soul, I believe he is an old liar?’ Then turning to Jerrie, he continued:  ’Are you better than you were this morning?  Upon my word, you look worse.  It’s that infernal watching last night that ails you.  I told mother you ought not to do it.’

Just then a whistle was heard in the distance; the train was at Truesdale, four miles away.

‘You will never catch it,’ Tom said, as Harold snatched up his bag and started to run, ’Here, jump on to Beaver, and leave him at the station.  I can go there for him.’

Harold knew it was impossible for him to make time against the train, and, accepting Tom’s offer, he vaulted into the saddle and galloped rapidly away, reaching the station just in time to give his horse to the care of a boy and to leap upon the train as it was moving away.

Meanwhile Tom walked on with Jerrie to the cottage, where he would have stopped if she had not said to him: 

’I would ask you to come in, but my head is aching so badly that I must go straight to bed.  Good-bye, Tom,’ and she offered him her hand, a most unusual thing for her to do on an ordinary occasion like this.

What ailed her, Tom wondered, that she spoke so kindly to him and looked at him so curiously?  Was she sorry for her decision, and did she wish to revoke it?

’Then, by Jove, I’ll give her a chance, for every time I see her I find myself more and more in love,’ Tom thought, as he left her and started for the station after Beaver, whom he found hitched to a post and pawing the ground impatiently.