Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to sit up a part of every day, and had walked across the floor and read a letter from Harold, full of solicitude for herself and enthusiasm for his trip over the wild mountains and across the vast plains to the lovely little city of Tacoma, built upon a cliff and looking seaward over the sound.
"Dear Harold," Jerrie whispered. "I shall be so glad when he comes home. Nothing can be done till then; I am so bewildered when I try to think."
In her weak state, everything seemed unreal to Jerrie, except the fact that she had found her mother, and many times each day she thanked her God who had brought her this unspeakable joy, and asked that she might do right when the time came to act. She knew the bag was safe, for she found it just where she had put it. But where were the diamonds? Had Harold taken them with him? Had he told any one? Did his grandmother know anything about them, she wondered, and she tried in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out, but was unsuccessful, for there was now too much pain and bitterness connected with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them. But the poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since Harold went away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy, and openly pushed on by Peterkin, until Tom Tracy went to him one day and threatened to have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail, if he ever breathed Harold's name again in connection with the diamonds.
"Wall, I swow!" was all Peterkin said, as he put an enormous quid of tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking to himself, "T'would take an all-fired while to scrape them tar and feathers off of me, I'm so big, and I b'lieve the feller meant it. Them high bucks, wouldn't like no better fun than to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry up a spell."
But the trouble did not stop with Peterkin's talk, for a neighboring Sunday paper, which fed its readers with all the choicest bits of gossip, came out with an article headed "The Tracy Diamonds," and after narrating the story in a most garbled and sensational manner, went on to comment upon the young man's having run away, rather than face public opinion, and to comment also upon the law which could not touch him because the offense was committed so long ago.
One after another, and without either knowing that the other had done so, Tom, and Dick, and Billy, waited upon the editor of the Sunday News, threatening to sue him for libel if he did not retract every word of the offensive article in his next issue, which he did. But the mischief was done, and the paper found its way at last to Jerrie, sent unwittingly by Ann Eliza, who covered it over a basket of fruit and flowers which was carried one afternoon to the cottage.
Jerrie had been down stairs several times and had walked a little way in the lane but was in her room when the basket was brought to her. Raising the paper, she was about to throw it on the floor, when her eye caught the words, "The Tracy Diamonds," and with bloodless lips and wildly beating heart she read the article through, 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 put 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 every thing."
Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her every thing 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, lest her madness had returned.