e now, she started, with an
exclamation of surprise, which was echoed by another, as Frank Tracy
sprang up and confronted her. It was not often that he entered the Tramp
House, and he would not have confessed to any one his superstitious
dread of it, or that, when he did visit it, he always had a feeling that
the dead woman found there years ago would start up to accuse him of his
deceit and hypocrisy. Could he have had his way he would have pulled the
building down, but it was not his, and when he suggested it to Arthur,
as he sometimes did, the latter opposed it, saying latterly, since Jerry
had been so much to him:

'No, no, Frank; let it stand. I like it, because but for it Jerry might
have perished with her mother, and I should not have had her with me.'

So the Tramp House stood, and grew damper and mustier each year, as the
moss and ivy gathered on the walls outside, and the dust and cobwebs
gathered on the walls within. These, however, Jerry was careful to brush
away, for she had a play house in one corner, and a little work-bench
and chair, and she often sat there alone and talked to herself, and the
woman dead so long ago, and to others whose faces were dim and shadowy,
but whom she had felt sure she had known. Very frequently she went
through the process of cleaning up, as she called it, and her object in
stopping there now was, in part, to see if it did not need her care
again.

'Oh, Mr. Tracy! are you here! How you scared me? I thought it was a
tramp!' she said, as he came toward her.

'Do you come here often?' he asked, as he offered her his hand.

'Yes, pretty often. I like it, because mother died here, and sometimes I
feel as if she would make it known to me here who she was. I talk to her
and ask her to tell me, but she never has. Oh, don't you wish she
would?'

Frank shuddered involuntarily, for to have Jerry told who she really
was, was the last thing he could desire, but as a criminal is said
always to talk about the crime he has committed and is hiding, so Frank,
when with Jerry, felt impelled to talk with her of the past and what she
could remember of it. Seating himself upon the bench with her at his
side, he said:

'And you really believe the woman found here was your mother?'

'Why, yes. Don't you? Who was my mother, if she wasn't?' and Jerry's
eyes opened wide as he looked at him.

'I don't know, I am sure. Does my brother talk of Gretchen now?' was the
abrupt reply.

'Yes, at time