"There is no mistake," she whispered; "but I can't think about it now, for this terrible pain in my head. I must wait, till Harold comes home; he will tell me what to do, and be so glad for me. Dear Harold, his days of labor are over, and grandmother's, too. Those diamonds are a fortune in themselves, and they are mine! my own! she said so! Oh, mother, I have found you at last, but I can't make it real; my head is so strange. What if I should be crazy? What if that dreadful taint should be in my blood, or what if I should die just as I have found my mother! Oh, Heaven, don't let me die; don't let me lose my reason, and I will try to do right; only show me what right is."
She was praying now upon her knees with her throbbing head upon the side of the bed, into which she finally crept with her clothes on, even to her boots, for Jerrie was herself no longer. The fever with which for days she had been threatened, and which had been induced by over-study at Vassar, and the excitement which had followed her return home, could be kept at bay no longer, and when Mrs. Crawford, who had seen her enter the house, went up after a while to see why she did not come down to tea, she found her sleeping heavily, with spots of crimson upon her cheeks, while her hands, which moved incessantly, were burning with fever. Occasionally she moaned and talked of the Tramp House, and rats, and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked something or somebody down, Mrs. Crawford could not tell what, unless it were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the size now of a walnut.
"Jerrie, Jerrie," Mrs. Crawford said in alarm, as she tried to remove the girl's clothes. "What is it, Jerrie? What has happened? Who hurt you? Who struck the blow?"
"Peterkin," was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie opened her eyelids only to close them again and sink away into a heavier sleep or stupefaction.
It seemed the latter, and as Mrs. Crawford could not herself go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that evening she sat all night by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of all her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was as large as a hen's egg.
"Did Peterkin strike you, and what for?" she kept asking; but Jerrie only moaned and muttered something she could not understand, except once, when she said, distinctly:
"Yes. Peterkin. Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's hammer, and knocked the table to pieces. I am glad he did it."
Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain what she meant, and when at least the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose name she always mentioned with a sob and a stretching out of her hands, as to some invisible presence. Help must be had, and for two hours Mrs. Crawford watched for the coming of some one, until at last she saw Tom Tracy galloping up on Beaver.
"Tom, Tom," she screamed from the window, "don't get off, but ride for your life and fetch the doctor, quick. Jerrie is very sick; has been crazy all night, and has a bunch on her head as big as a bowl, where she says Peterkin struck her."
"Peterkin struck Jerrie! I'll kill him!" Tom said, as he tore down the lane and out upon the highway in quest of the physician, who was soon found and at Jerrie's side, where Tom stood with him; gazing awestruck upon the fever-stricken girl, who was tossing and talking all the time, and whose bright eyes unclosed once and fixed themselves on him, as he spoke her name and laid his hand on one of hers.