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.

'I shall _never_ tell!' she said to Arthur, 'and I shall go! I can bear
it better than you. It is not that which makes my headache so. It's--oh,
Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good, and I am so sorry about the
diamonds--Mrs. Tracy was so proud of them. Can't you contrive to get
them back to her? I could, if you would let me. I am thinking all the
time how to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head aches
so when I think.'

Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that the lost
diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy to have them.
Occasionally his brows would knit together, and he seemed trying to
recall something which perplexed him, and which her words had evidently
suggested to his mind.

'Cherry,' he said to her one day when he came as usual, and her first
eager question was, 'Have they found them?' 'Jerry, try and understand
me. Do you know where the diamonds are?'

Instantly into Jerry's eyes there came a scared look, but she answered,
unhesitatingly:

'Yes, don't you?'

'No,' was the prompt reply; 'though it seems to me I did know, but there
has been so much talk about them, and you are so sick, that everything
has gone from my head, and the bees