’Hallo, Mr. Prayer-book! your piety won’t let you keep back a darned thing you know agin me, but it lets you have in your possession diamonds which I’d eenamost sware was them stones Miss Tracy lost years ago and suspected you of takin.  I know the box anyway, I heard it described so often, and I b’lieve I know them diamonds.  I seen ’em in the lookin’-glass, settin’ in t’other room, and seen you look all round like a thief afore you opened ’em.  So, fork over, and mebby you can give me back May Jane’s pin you stole at the party the night Mr. Arthur came home.  Fork over, I say!’

Too much astonished at first to speak, Harold stood staring at the man who had attacked him so brutally, while his hand closed tightly over the diamonds in his pocket, as if fearing they might be wrenched from him by force.

‘Will you fork over, or shall I call the perlice?’ Peterkin asked.

‘Call the police as soon as you like,’ Harold replied, ’but I shall not give you the diamonds.’

’Then you own that you’ve got ’em!  That’s half the battle!’ Peterkin said, coming up close to him, and looking at him with a meaning smile more detestable than any menace could have been.  ’I know you’ve got ’em, and I can run you if I try, and then what will your doxie think of you!  Will she refuse my Bill for a thief, and treat me as if I was dirt?’

‘What do you mean, sir?’ Harold demanded, feeling intuitively that by his doxie Jerrie was meant, and feeling a great horror, too, lest by some means Jerrie’s name should be mixed up with the affair before she had a chance to explain.

The reference to Billy was a puzzle, but Peterkin did not leave him in doubt.

’I mean that you think yourself very fine, and always have, and that are girl of the carpet-bag thinks herself fine, too, and refused my Bill for you, who hain’t a cent in the world.  I seen it in her face when I twitted her on it, and she riz up agin me like a catamount.  But I’ll be even with you both yit.  I’ve got you in my power, young man, but—­’ and here he came a step or two nearer to Harold, and dropping his voice to a whisper said:  ‘I sha’n’t do nothin’, nor say nothin’ till you’ve gin your evidence, and if you hold your tongue I will.  You tickle me, and I’ll tickle you! see!’

Harold was too indignant to reply, and feeling that he was degrading himself every moment he spent in the presence of that man, he left the room without a word, and went to his own apartment, but not to sleep, for never had he spent so wretched a night as that which followed his interview with Peterkin.  Of what the man could do to him, he had no fear.  His anxiety was all for Jerrie.  Where did she find the diamonds, and for whom did she keep silence so long? and what would be said of the act when it was known, as it might be, though not from him?