All night Tom’s dreams had been haunted with Jerrie’s voice and Jerrie’s look as she gave him her hand and said, ‘Good-bye, Tom,’ and he had ridden over early to see if the look and tone were still there, and if they were, and he had a chance, he meant to renew his offer.  But words of love would have been sadly out of place to this restless, feverish girl, whose incoherent babblings puzzled and bewildered him.

One fact, however, was distinct in his mind—­Peterkin had struck her a terrible blow in the Tramp House.  Of that he was sure, though why he should have done so he could not guess; and vowing vengeance upon the man, he left the cottage at last and rode down to the Tramp House, where he found the table in a state of ruin upon the door, three of the legs upon it and the other one nowhere to be seen.

‘He struck her with it and then threw it away, I’ll bet,’ he said to himself, as he hunted for the missing leg; ’and it was some quarrel he picked with her about Hal, who is going to swear against him.  Jerrie would never hear Hal abused, and I’ve no doubt she aggravated the wretch until he forgot himself and dealt her that blow.  I’ll have him arrested for assault and battery, as sure as I am born.’

Hurrying home, he told the story to his mother, who smiled incredulously and said she did not believe it, bidding him say nothing of it to Maude, who was not as well as usual that day.  Then he told his father, who started at once for the cottage, where Mrs. Crawford refused to let him see Jerrie, saying that the doctor’s orders were that she should be kept perfectly quiet.  But as they stood talking together near the open door, Jerrie’s voice was heard calling: 

‘Let Mr. Frank come up.’

So Frank went up, and, notwithstanding all he had heard from Tom, he was surprised at Jerrie’s flushed face and the unnatural expression of her eyes, which turned so eagerly toward him as he came in.

‘Oh, Mr. Tracy,’ she said, as he sat down beside her and took one of her burning hands in his, ‘you have always been kind to me, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, with a keen pang of remorse, and wondering if she would call it kindness if she knew all that he did.

‘And I think you like me some,’ she continued:  ‘don’t you?’

‘Like you!’ he repeated; ’yes, more than you can ever know.  Why, sometimes I think I like you almost as much as I do Maude.’

As if the mention of Maude had sent her thoughts backward in a very different channel, she said abruptly, while she held his gaze steadily with her bright eyes: 

‘You posted that letter?’

Frank knew perfectly well that she meant the letter which, together with the photograph, and the Bible, and the lock of the baby’s golden hair, had lain for years in his private drawer—­the letter whose superscription he had studied so many times, and which had seldom been absent from his thoughts an hour since that night when, from her perch on the gate-post, Jerrie had startled him with the question she was asking him now.  But be affected ignorance and said, as indifferently as he could, with those blue eyes upon him seeming to read his inmost thoughts: