What did she mean?  Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain, and when at last the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose name she always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands, as to some invisible presence.  Help must be had from some quarter; and for two hours, which seemed to her years, Mrs. Crawford watched for the coming of someone, until at last she saw Tom Tracy galloping up on Beaver.

‘Tom, Tom,’ she screamed from the window, as she saw him dismounting at the gate, ’don’t get off, but ride for your life and fetch the doctor, quick.  Jerrie is very sick; has been crazy all night, and has a bunch on her head as big as a bowl, where she says Peterkin struck her.

‘Peterkin struck Jerrie!  I’ll kill him!’ Tom said as he tore down the lane and out upon the highway in quest of the physician, who was soon found and at Jerrie’s side, where Tom stood with him, gazing awe struck upon the fever stricken girl, who was tossing and talking all the time, and whose bright eyes unclosed once and fixed themselves on him, as he spoke her name and laid his hand on one of hers.

‘Oh, Tom, Tom,’ she said, ’you told me you’d kill her.  Will you kill her?  Will you kill her?’ And a wild, hysterical laugh echoed through the room, as she kept repeating the words, ’Will you kill her?  Will you kill her?’ which conveyed no meaning to Tom, who had forgotten what he had said he would do if a claimant to Tracy Park should appear in the shape of a young lady.

Whatever Jerrie took up she repeated rapidly until something else came into her mind, and when Mrs. Crawford, referring to the bunch on her head, said to the physician, ‘Peterkin struck the blow, she says,’ she began at once like a parrot.  ’Peterkin struck the blow!  Peterkin struck the blow!’ until another idea suggested itself, and she began to ring changes on the sentence.  ’In the rat-hole; in the Tramp House; in the Tramp House; in the rat-hole,’ talking so fast that sometimes it was impossible to follow her.

The blow on her head alone could not have produced this state of things; it was rather over-excitement, added to some great mental shock, the nature of which he could not divine, the doctor said to Tom, who in his wrath at Peterkin was ready to flay him alive, or at least to ride him on a rail the instant he entered town.

It was a puzzling case, though not a dangerous one as yet, the physician said.  Jerrie’s strong constitution could stand an attack much more severe than this one; and prescribing perfect quiet, with strict orders that she should see no more people than was necessary, he left, promising to return in the afternoon, when he hoped to find her better.  Tom lingered a while after the doctor had left, and showed himself so thoughtful and kind that Mrs. Crawford forgave him much which she had harbored against him for his treatment of Harold.