‘Why, Jerry, what have you done?’ and ‘Oh, Jerry, how you look!’ were the ejaculatory remarks which greeted her next morning, when she went down to her breakfast of bread and water, for she would take nothing else.

‘Why did you do it?’ Mrs. Crawford asked a little angry and a good deal astonished; but Jerry only answered at first with her tears, as Harold jeered at her forlorn appearance and called her a picked chicken.

‘Maude’s hair is short, and all the girls’, and mine was always in my eyes and snarled awfully,’ she said at last, and this was all the excuse she would give for what she had done; while for her persisting in a bread and water diet she would give no reason for three or four days.  Then she said to Harold, suddenly: 

’You told me that the one who stole the diamonds would have to eat bread and water and have his head shaved, and I am trying to see how it would seem—­am playing that I am the man, and in prison; but I find it very hard, I don’t believe I can stand it.  Oh, Harold, do you think they will ever find the diamonds?  I am so tired and hungry, and the blackberry pie we had for dinner did look so good!’

‘Jerry,’ Harold exclaimed, in amazement, and but dimly comprehending her real meaning, ’you are crazy, to be playing you are a convict!  And is that what you have been doing?’

‘Ye-es,’ Jerry sobbed; ’but I can’t bear it, and I hope they will not find him,’

‘Him!  Who?’ Harold asked.

‘The one who took the diamonds,’ she replied.

’And I hope they will.  He ought to be found and punished.  Think what harm he has done to me by letting them accuse me,’ Harold answered, indignantly.

‘No, no, Hally,’ Jerry replied.  ’No one accused you but Tom, and he is meaner than dirt; and if they did think you took them, and if you had to go, I should not let you; I should go in your place.  I could do it for you and Mr. Arthur, but for no one else.  Oh, I hope they will never find them.’

She put her hands to her head, and looked so white and faint that Harold was alarmed, and took her at once to his mother, who, scarcely less frightened than himself, made her lie down, and brought her a piece of toast and a cup of milk, which revived her a little.  But the strain upon her nerves for the last few days, and the fasting on bread and water proved too much for the child, who for a week or more lay up in her little room, burning with fever, and talking strange things at intervals, of diamonds, and state prison, and accessories, and substitutes, the last of which she said she was, assuring some one to whom she seemed to be talking that she would never tell, never!

Every day Arthur came and sat for an hour by her bed, and held her hot hands in his, and listened to her talk, and marvelled at her shorn head, which he did not like.  Whatever he said to her was spoken in German, and as she answered in the same tongue, no one understood what they said to each other, though Harold, who understood a few German words, knew that she was talking of the diamonds, and the prison, and the substitute.