And Bertha was quick to respond. Giving a final tug to the bag at her neck, she pulled it out, and, drawing the case from it, she laid it in the hand of the angry old man, saying quietly: “Can you tell me if those are the stones which you lost? Because, if they are, they have been in my possession ever since the day when you lost them, and Mr. Bradgate has known nothing whatever about them.”
“They are mine! They are mine!” shrieked the old man, and the shock of recovering them so suddenly being quite too much for him, he dropped where he stood in a faint on the floor.
Edgar Bradgate stooped to lift him. “I was afraid so much excitement must have been bad for the poor old fellow,” he said, in a pitying tone, and then he handed back the case of diamonds to Bertha, for they had dropped from the old man’s nerveless hand, “You will have to take care of this case again, Miss Doyne. It seems to be your fate to have those stones in your custody.”
“Take care of them, Grace, they are more your business than mine, now that we know to whom they belong,” said Bertha, tossing the case on to her cousin’s couch, and then she went to help Edgar and Eunice restore the old man to consciousness again.
But that was what their combined efforts could not do. For a long time they worked, doing their utmost, but the frail old body had been quite unfit to bear the strain of such fierce excitement, coming, as it probably did, upon a long fast, and at length Eunice desisted from her task and said to the others:
“We can do no more, and I think that the poor old man is dying. We ought to have the doctor.”
“I will go for him,” said Edgar, without hesitation. “The moon should be thinking of showing pretty soon now, and I shall be able to find my way along the trail all right.”
“But the horse—you said that it was dead beat,” said Bertha.
“Can’t I have your old horse?” he asked. “That, at any rate, is fresh enough by the way it squealed and kicked when I fed it this evening.”
“Oh, I had forgotten Pucker,” Bertha said, with a great relief in her tone. “I will go and hitch up while you get some supper. No, it is of no use to protest, because you have not had one proper meal to-day, and I can feed when you are gone. Then, too, I can harness old Pucker quicker than you could hope to do it; for the old horse has a rather queer temper, and simply loves to show off to strangers.”