h, understanding the situation perfectly, and resolving at once
how to act. It seemed to her that she was lifted above and out of
herself, she felt so strong, and light, and well, as she threw on her
bonnet and shawl, and taking the leather bag in her hand, hurried down
stairs in quest of Mrs. Crawford.

'Grandma!' she exclaimed, 'why haven't you told me about Harold, and the
suspicion resting on him, and why did you let him go until I was better,
and what are the people saying? Tell me everything.'

Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her everything she
knew, and that she herself had added to the mystery by the strange
things she had said in her delirium about the diamonds, which she
insisted were hers.

'And they are mine!' Jerrie said, while Mrs. Crawford looked at her in
alarm, for her madness had returned.

'Where are you going?' she gasped, as Jerrie turned toward the door.

'To Tracy Park, to claim my own and clear Harold!' was the reply. 'When
I come back I will tell you all, but now I cannot wait.'

'But, Jerrie, you are not strong enough to walk there, and besides they
have company this afternoon, some kind of a new-fangled card party, and
you must not go,' Mrs. Crawford said.

'I have the strength of twenty horses,' Jerrie said, 'and if they have
company, so much the better, for there will be more to hear my story.
Good-bye.'

She was off like an arrow, and went almost upon a run through the leafy
woods until the house was reached, and then she stopped a moment to take
breath and look about her. How very fair and beautiful it was, that home
of the Tracys, and Jerrie's heart beat so hard that she felt for a
moment as if she were choking to death as she sat under a maple tree and
tried to think it all over, to make sure there was no mistake. Opening
the box she took out two documents, and read them again as she had the
night she was taken sick. One was a certificate of marriage, the other
of a birth and baptism; there was no mistake.

Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other, she went on to
the house, from which shouts of laughter were issuing, Nina's voice, and
Marian's, and Tom's, and Dick's, and Mrs. Tracy's. Jerrie shuddered a
little when she heard that, for it brought back to her mind all the
slights she had received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and
the pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she looked
up at the windows of Maude's ro