This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it to Tracy Park.  This done, he gave no further thought to the message so full of such import to himself, but began to talk of and plan his contemplated trip to Tacoma by the next steamer which sailed.  It was six o’clock when he had his dinner in his own private parlour, where he was served by both Charles and a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.

‘Confound it,’ he said, ’have they nothing to do at home but to torment me with telegrams?  Didn’t I tell them to pay the old Harry and have done with it?  What do they mean?’ and putting the envelope down by his plate he went quietly on with his dinner until he was through, when he took it up, and, breaking the seal, read: 

    ‘Come at once.  I need you.  JERRIE.’

That changed everything, and with a bound he was in the next room, gesticulating fiercely, and ordering Charles to step lively and get everything in readiness to start home on the first eastward bound train which left San Francisco.

‘That rascally Tom is a liar,’ he said.  ’It’s not the old Harry to pay.  It’s Jerrie.  Do you hear, it’s Jerrie.  Bring me some paper, quick, and don’t stand staring at me as if I were a lunatic.  It’s Jerrie who needs me.’

Charles brought the paper, on which his master wrote: 

    ’Coming on the wings of the wind, Yours respectfully,

    ‘ARTHUR TRACY.’

In less than half an hour this singular message was flying along the wires across the continent, and within a few hours Arthur was following it as fast as the steam horse could take him.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD DONE IN SHANNONDALE.

If the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed up half the inhabitants of Shannondale the other half could not have been more astonished than they were at the news which Peterkin was the first to tell them, and which he had risen very early to do, before some one else should be before him.  Irascible and quick-tempered as he was, he was easily appeased, and the fact that Jerrie was Arthur Tracy’s daughter changed his opinion of her at once.

’The biggest heiress in the county except my Ann ’Liza, and, by gum, I’m glad on’t for her and Arthur.  I allus said she was hisen, and by George, to think that I helped her into her fortin, for if I hadn’t of knocked that rotten old table down she’d of never found them memoirs,’ he said to the first person to whom he communicated the news, and then hurried off to buttonhole and enlighten others, until everybody knew and was discussing the strange story.

Before noon scores of people had found it in their way to walk past the cottage, hoping to catch sight of Jerrie, while several went in and told her how glad they were for her and Mr. Arthur, and looked at her with wondering eyes as if she were not quite the same girl they had known as Jerrie Crawford.