'What is it? What have you in your hand?' he asked.
Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her eyes had in them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word, she laid the box in his hand, and then stood watching him is he opened it.
Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his voice trembled as he said, in a whisper:
'Mrs. Tracy's diamonds!'
'Yes, Mrs. Tracy's diamonds,' Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on the Mrs. Tracy.
'How came you by them, and where did you find them,' Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery eyes confronting him.
'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 thrust 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, upon my soul, 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 do 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.'