The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

There was almost a human look in the dumb creature’s eyes, as Mark talked to her, and he half felt that he was understood.

“Good-bye, Dido, and Paul and Virginia,” he said, as he left the stable and closed the door.

Just outside he met Jeff. Next to Helen Jeff was dearer to Mark than any other living creature. He had rescued him from the street; there was a kind of link between them connecting them with the tragedy of the Dalton house, and the man’s heart yearned towards the boy.

“Jeff,” he said, “when I am in New York I may look around for some place different from this. If I find one and go there later, would you like to live with me?”

“In New York? You bet!” was Jeff’s reply, as he darted away.

Mark did not dare to be very demonstrative in his adieus to the family lest they should wonder at it. Mrs. Tracy, who always treated him as an inferior had seen the safe opened that morning and knew her diamonds were there, and it was not necessary to speak to her at all. He found Mrs. Taylor, with whom he shook hands, feeling glad that it was dusky in the hall so she could not see his face.

“Yes, I am weaker than a woman and weaker than water,” he thought, as he felt his knees shake under him, for the hardest was yet to come, the saying good-bye to Uncle Zach, who was standing on the walk, bareheaded in a misty rain which was beginning to fall.

“Good-bye, Mark, my boy,” he said cheerily. “Have a good time, and don’t hurry back. It’s lonesome without you, but I can stan’ it and git along a day or two, and if you see that gal give her Uncle Zach’s love.”

Mark could not reply, and opening his umbrella and taking up his gripsack he walked rapidly away, stopping once at the corner to look back at the house, at the lights in the kitchen and office and Mrs. Tracy’s salon and at Dot standing in the door and calling to her husband to come in out of the rain before he took his death cold.

“There’ll be an awful hubbub there in two or three days,” he said, as he hurried away in the darkness to catch the train whose faint rumble he heard in the distance.