"I can't tell you now. Put them up quick. Don't let any one see them. Somebody is coming," Jerrie said, hurriedly, as her ear caught a sound and her eye an object which Harold neither saw nor heard as he mechanically put the box into his side pocket and then turned just as Tom Tracy came up on horseback.
"Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!" he cried, dismounting quickly and throwing the bridle-rein over his arm. "And so you are off to that suit?" he continued, addressing himself to Harold. "By George, I wish I were a witness, I'd swear the old man's head off; for I believe he is an old liar!" Then turning to Jerrie, he continued: "Are you better than you were this morning? Upon my word, you look worse. It's that infernal watching last night that ails you. I told mother you ought not to have done it."
Just then a whistle was heard in the distance; the train was at Truesdale, four miles away.
"You will never catch it," Tom said, as Harold snatched up his bag and started to run. "Here, jump on to Beaver, and leave him at the station. I can go there for him."
Harold knew it was impossible for him to make time against the train, and, accepting Tom's offer, he vaulted into the saddle and galloped rapidly away, reaching the station just in time to give his horse to the care of a boy and to leap upon the train as it was moving away.
Meanwhile Tom walked on with Jerrie to the cottage, where he would have stopped if she had not said to him:
"I would ask you to come in, but my head is aching so badly that I must go straight to bed. Good-by, Tom," and she offered him her hand, a most unusual thing for her to do on an ordinary occasion like this.
What ailed her, Tom wondered, that she spoke so kindly to him and looked at him so curiously? Was she sorry for her decision, and did she wish to revoke it?
"Then, by Jove, I'll give her a chance, for every time I see her I find myself more and more in love," Tom thought, as he left her and started for the station after Beaver, whom he found hitched to a post and pawing the ground impatiently.
Mrs. Crawford was in the garden when Jerrie entered the house, and thus there was no one to see her as she hurried up stairs and hid the leather bag away upon a shelf in her dressing-room. First, however, she took out two of the papers and read them again, as if to make assurance doubly sure; then she tried the little key to the lock, which it fitted perfectly.