ng, man! Of course you must! Don't I know that?' the
irascible Peterkin growled, getting angry at once. 'Of course you must
answer questions, but you needn't blab out stuff they don't ask you, so
as to lead 'em on. I know 'em, the blood-hounds; they'll squeeze you
dry, once let 'em git an inklin' you know sunthin' more. Now, if this
goes agin me, I'm out at least thirty thousand dollars; and between you
and I, I don't mind givin' a cool two thousand, or three, or mebby five,
right out of pocket, cash down, to anybody whose testimony, without
bein' a lie--I don't want nobody to swear false, remember--but, heaven
and earth, can't a body furgit a little, and keep back a lot if they
want to?' 'What are you trying to say to me?' Harold asked, his face
pale with resentment, as he suspected the man's motive.

'Say to you? Nothin', only that I'll give five thousand dollars down to
the chap whose testimony gits me off and flings old Wilson.'

'Mr. Peterkin,' Harold said, looking the old wretch full in the face,
'if you are trying to bribe me, let me tell you at once that I am not to
be bought. I shall not volunteer information, but shall answer
truthfully whatever is asked me.'

'Go to thunder, then! I always knew you were a bad aig,' Peterkin
roared; and as there was nothing to be made from Harold, he changed his
seat to try his tactics elsewhere.

Left to himself, Harold had time to think of the diamonds, which,
indeed, had not been absent from his thoughts a moment, since Jerrie
gave them to him. They were closely buttoned in his coat pocket, where
they burned like fire, as he wondered where and how Jerrie had found
them.

'In the Tramp House it must have been,' he said to himself; 'but who put
them there, and how did she chance to find them, and why did she look so
wild and excited, so like a crazy person, when she gave them to me,
bidding me let no one see them?'

These questions he could not answer, and his brain was all in a whirl
when the train reached Springfield, and, with the others, he registered
himself at the hotel. Suddenly, like a gleam of lightning seen through a
rift of clouds, there came back to him, with a horrible distinctness,
the words the child Jerry had spoken to him that day years ago, when he
had walked homeward with her through the leafy woods from the Park
House, where he had been questioned so closely by Mrs. Tracy with regard
to her diamonds and what he had been doing in the house on the morn