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 devil 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 his opinion of her at once.
"The biggest heiress in the county except my Ann 'Liza, and, by gum, I'm glad on't for her and Arthur. I allus said she was hisen, and by George, to think I helped her into her fortin, for if I hadn't of knocked that rotten old table down she'd of never found them memoirs," he said to the first person to whom he communicated the news, and then hurried off to enlighten others, until every body knew and was discussing the strange story.