ands, which moved incessantly, were burning with
fever. Occasionally she moaned and talked in her sleep of the Tramp
House, and rats, and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked
something or somebody down, Mrs. Crawford could not tell what, unless it
were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the size now of
a walnut.

'Jerrie, Jerrie,' Mrs. Crawford cried in alarm, as she tried to remove
the girl's clothes. 'What is it, Jerrie? What has happened? Who hurt
you? Who struck the blow?'

'Peterkin,' was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie opened her
eyelids only to close them again and sink away into a heavier sleep or
stupefaction. It seemed the latter, and as Mrs. Crawford could not
herself go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that
evening, she sat all night, by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands
and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of all
her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was as large
as a hen's egg.

'Did Peterkin strike you, and what for?' she kept asking; but Jerrie
only moaned and muttered something she could not understand, except once
when she said, distinctly:

'Yes, Peterkin. Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's hammer, and
knocked the table to pieces. I am glad he did it.'

What did she mean? Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain, and when at last
the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who
was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things
about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose
name she always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands, as
to some invisible presence. Help must be had from some quarter; and for
two hours, which seemed to her years, Mrs. Crawford watched for the
coming of someone, until at last she saw Tom Tracy galloping up on
Beaver.

'Tom, Tom,' she screamed from the window, as she saw him dismounting at
the gate, 'don't get off, but ride for your life and fetch the doctor,
quick. Jerrie is very sick; has been crazy all night, and has a bunch on
her head as big as a bowl, where she says Peterkin struck her.

'Peterkin struck Jerrie! I'll kill him!' Tom said as he tore down the
lane and out upon the highway in quest of the physician, who was soon
found and at Jerrie's side, where Tom stood with him, gazing awe struck
upon the fever stricken girl, who was tossing and talking all the time,
and whose b