‘The diamonds; Mrs. Tracy’s diamonds; the ones you gave her,’ was Jerry’s answer.

For a moment, Arthur looked perplexed and bewildered and confused, and seemed trying to recall something which would not come at his bidding.

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ he said at last.  ’I don’t seem to think of anything, my head is so thick with all the noise there was here yesterday and the tumult this morning.  Search-warrants, Charles says, and two strange men driving up so early.  Who are they, Jerry?’

’Police, come to search the house; search everybody and everything.  Ain’t you afraid?’ Jerry said.

’Afraid?  No:  why should I be afraid?  Why, child, how white you are, and what makes you tremble so?  You didn’t take the diamonds,’ was Arthur’s response, as he drew the little girl close to him and looked into her pallid face.

‘Mr. Arthur,’ Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being heard, ’if I should give Maude something for her very own, and she should accept and keep it a good while, and then some day I should take it from her, when she did not know it, and hide it, and not give it up, would that be stealing?’

‘Certainly.  Why do you ask?’

Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question to him she had put to Harold: 

’If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send him to state prison?’

‘Undoubtedly.  They ought to.’

‘And cut off his hair?’

She was threading Arthur’s luxuriant locks caressingly, and almost pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question, to which he replied, shortly: 

‘Yes.’

‘And make him eat bread and water and mush?’

‘Yes; I believe so.’

‘And sleep on a board?’

‘Yes, or something as bad.’

‘And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?’

Now she had in hers Arthur’s hands, soft and white as a woman’s, and seemed to be calculating how much hard work it would take to blister hands like these.

‘Yes, work till his hands drop off,’ Arthur said.

With a shudder, she continued: 

‘I could not bear it:  could you?’

’Bear it?  No; I should die in a week.  Why, what does ail you?  You are shaking like a leaf.  What are you afraid of?’

’I don’t know; only state prison seems so terrible, and they are looking everywhere.  What if they should come in here?’

‘Come in here?  Impossible, unless they break the door down,’ Arthur replied; and then Jerry said to him: 

’If they do, suppose you lie down and let me cover you with the afghan and cushions?’

‘But I don’t want to lie down and be smothered with cushions,’ Arthur returned, puzzled, and wondering at the excitement of the child, who nestled close to his side and held fast to his hand, as if she were guarding him, or expected him to guard her, while the examination went on outside, and the frightened and angry servants submitted to having their boxes and trunks examined.