e following telegram:

'Come immediately. There's the devil to pay.

'TOM TRACY.'

Arthur read the message two or three times, not at all disturbed by it,
but vastly amused at its wording; then, putting it down, he went on with
his breakfast until it was finished, when he took a card from his pocket
and wrote upon it:

'Pay him then, for I sha'n't come. ARTHUR TRACY.'

This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it to Tracy
Park. This done, he gave no further thought to the message so full of
such import to himself, but began to talk of and plan his contemplated
trip to Tacoma by the next steamer which sailed. It was six o'clock when
he had his dinner in his own private parlour, where he was served by
both Charles and a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.

'Confound it,' he said, 'have they nothing to do at home but to torment
me with telegrams? Didn't I tell them to pay the old Harry and have done
with it? What do they mean?' and putting the envelope down by his plate
he went quietly on with his dinner until he was through, when he took it
up, and, breaking the seal, read:

'Come at once. I need you. JERRIE.'

That changed everything, and with a bound he was in the next room,
gesticulating fiercely, and ordering Charles to step lively and get
everything in readiness to start home on the first eastward bound train
which left San Francisco.

'That rascally Tom is a liar,' he said. 'It's not the old Harry to pay.
It's Jerrie. Do you hear, it's Jerrie. Bring me some paper, quick, and
don't stand staring at me as if I were a lunatic. It's Jerrie who needs
me.'

Charles brought the paper, on which his master wrote:

'Coming on the wings of the wind, Yours respectfully,

'ARTHUR TRACY.'

In less than half an hour this singular message was flying along the
wires across the continent, and within a few hours Arthur was following
it as fast as the steam horse could take him.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD DONE IN SHANNONDALE.

If the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed up half the inhabitants
of Shannondale the other half could not have been more astonished than
they were at the news which Peterkin was the first to tell them, and
which he had risen very early to do, before some one else should be
before him. Irascible and quick-tempered as he was, he was easily
appeased, and the fact that Jerrie was Arthur Tracy's daughter changed