and bags, and diamonds until Harold became alarmed and went
for his grandmother.

There was nothing to be learned from Jerrie in her present condition,
and so Harold started for the Tramp House to see what that would tell
him. The table was still upon the floor, with the three legs piled upon
it, while the fourth one was missing. But Harold found it at last; for,
remembering what Jerrie had said of the rat-hole, he investigated that
spot, and from its enlarged appearance drew his own conclusion. Jerrie
had found the diamonds there; he had no doubt of it, and he told Tom
Tracy so; for, as if there was a fascination about the place for him,
Tom appeared in the door-way just as Harold was leaving it. Sitting down
upon the bench where Jerrie had sat that day when Peterkin attacked her,
the two young men who had been enemies all their lives, but who were now
drawn together by a common sympathy and love for the same girl, talked
the matter over again, each arriving at the same theory as the most
probable one they could accept.

'Arthur, in a crazy fit, had secreted the diamonds, and Jerrie knew it,
but possibly not where he had put them. This accounted for her strange
sickness when a child, while her finding them later on, added to other
causes, would account for her sickness now. Peterkin owns that he was
blowing her up for something, and that he knocked the table down with
his fist, but he swears he didn't touch her,' Tom said, repeating in
substance all Peterkin had said to him in the train when shaking with
fear of a _writ_.

'And do you still mean to keep silent with regard to Jerrie?' Tom asked.

'Yes,' Harold replied; 'her name must not be mentioned in connection
with the diamonds. I can't have the slightest breath of suspicion
touching Jerrie, _my sister_.'

'Sister be hanged!' Tom began savagely, then checked himself, and added
with a sneering laugh: 'Don't try to deceive me, Hal, with your sister
business. You love Jerrie, and she loves you, and that is one reason why
I hate you, or shall, when this miserable business is cleared up. Just
now we must pull together and find out where she found the diamonds, and
who put them there. To write to Uncle Arthur would do no good, though
seeing him might; the last we heard he was thinking of taking the coast
voyage from San Francisco to Tacoma.'

'Tom,' Harold exclaimed, with great energy, as he sprang to his feet,
'that decides me;' and then he told of the offer Billy