’Excuse me for this weakness; only girls should cry, but I have borne so much, and your coming was such a surprise.  Thank you all.  I cannot say what I feel.  I should cry again if I did.’

‘Never mind, old boy,’ Dick’s cheery voice called out.  ’We know what you would say.  We came to help you, just a few of us; but if anything had really happened to you, why, all Shannondale would have turned out to the rescue.’

‘Thank you, Dick,’ Harold said, the tears starting again; then, as his eye fell for the first time upon Tom, he exclaimed, with a glad ring in his voice, ‘and you, too, Tom!’

‘Yes, I thought I’d come with the crowd and see the fun,’ Tom answered, indifferently, as he walked away by himself.

Tom had said very little, on the train, or after they had reached the hotel, but no one had listened with more eagerness to every detail of the matter than he had done, and all that morning he was busy gathering up every item of information, and listening to the guesses as to who the person could be who gave the diamonds to Harold.

The jewels had been identified by his father and by himself, although an identification was scarcely necessary as Harold had distinctly said: 

’They are the Tracy diamonds, and the person who gave them, to me said so.’

But who was the person?  That was the question puzzling the heads of all the Shannondale people as the morning wore on, and each went where he liked.  At last, toward noon, Tom found himself near Harold in front of the court-house, and going up to him, said: 

‘Hal, I wan’t to talk to you a little while.’

‘Yes,’ Hal said, assentingly, and selecting out a retired corner, Tom began: 

’Hal, I’ve never shown any great liking for you, and I don’t s’pose I have any, but I don’t like to see a man kicked for nothing, and so I came over with the rest.’

‘Thank you, Tom,’ Harold replied, ’I don’t think you ever did like me, and I don’t think I cared if you didn’t, but I’m glad you came.  Is that all you wished to say to me?’

‘So,’ Tom answered.  ‘Jerrie is very sick—­’

‘Jerrie!  Jerrie sick!  Oh, Tom!’

It was a cry of almost despair as Harold thought, ’What if she should die and the people never know.’

’She had an awful headache when you left her in the lane, and I walked home with her, and the next morning she was raving mad—­kind of a brain fever, I guess.’

Harold was stupefied, but he managed to ask: 

‘Does she talk much?  What does she say?’

There was alarm in his voice, which the sagacious Tom detected at once, and, strengthened in his suspicion, he replied: 

‘Nothing about the diamonds, and the Lord knows I hope she won’t.’

‘What do you mean!’ Harold asked, in a frightened tone.