‘Don’t you worry,’ Tom replied.  ’I wouldn’t harm Jerrie any more than you would, but—­Well, Hal, you are a trump!  Yes, you are, to hold your tongue and let some think you are the culprit.  Hal, Jerrie gave you the diamonds.  I saw her do it in the lane as I came up to you.  I did not think of it at the time, but afterward it came to me that you took something from her and slipped it into your pocket, and that you both looked scared when you saw me.  Jerrie was abstracted and queer all the way to the house, and had a bruise on her head, and she keeps talking of the Tramp House and Peterkin, who, she says, dealt the blow.  I went to the Tramp House, and found the old table on the floor, with three of the legs on it; the fourth I couldn’t find.  I thought at first that the old wretch had quarreled with her about you on account of the suit, and she had squared up to him, and he had struck her; but now I believe he had the diamonds, and she got them from him in some way, and he struck her with the missing table-leg.  If you say so, I’ll have him arrested.’

Tom had told his story rapidly, while Harold listened breathlessly, until he suggested the arrest of Peterkin, when he exclaimed: 

’No, no, Tom.  No; don’t you see that would mix Jerrie’s name up with the diamonds, and that must not be.  She must not be mentioned in connection with them until she speaks for herself; and, besides, I do not believe it was Peterkin who took them.  It might have been your Uncle Arthur.’

‘Uncle Arthur?’ Tom said, indignantly.  ‘Why, he gave them to mother.’

‘I know he did,’ Harold continued; ’but in a crazy fit he might have taken them away and secreted them and then forgotten it, and Jerrie might have known it, and not been able to find them till now.  Many things go to prove that;’ and very briefly Harold repeated some incidents connected with Jerrie’s illness when she was a child.

‘That looks like it, certainly,’ Tom said; ’but I am awfully loth to give up arresting the brute, and believe I shall do it yet for assault and battery.  He certainly struck her.  You will see for yourself the lump on her head.’

So saying Tom arose to go away, but before he went made a remark quite characteristic of him and his feeling for Harold, to whom he said, with a laugh: 

’Don’t for thunder’s sake, think us a kind of a Damon and Pythias twins, because I’ve joined hands with you against Peterkin and for Jerrie.  Herod and Pilate, you know, became friends, but I guess at heart they were Pilate and Herod still.’

’No danger of my presuming at all upon your friendship for myself, though I thank you for your interest in Jerrie,’ Harold replied.

Then the two separated, Tom going his way and Harold his, until it was time for the afternoon train which was to take them home.