Then the rats, attracted by this novel appearance in their midst, had investigated and dragged it so far from the opening that it could not been seen unless one went down upon the floor to look for it.
This was the conviction that flashed upon Jerrie as she stood, with widely dilated eyes and quivering nostrils, staring at the bag, without the power at first to speak or move.
The music was gone now--Gretchen's voice and Arthur's--and there was only in her ears a roaring sound like the rushing of distant waters falling heavily, while the objects in the room swam around her, and she experienced again that ringing sensation as if the top of her head were leaving her.

She was so sure that here at last was a message from the dead--that she had the mystery of her babyhood in her grasp--and yet, for full two minutes she hesitated and held back, until at last the sweet, pale face which had haunted her so often seemed about to touch her own with a caress which brought the hot tears to her eyes, and the spell which had bound her hands and feet was broken.
The bag was clasped, but not locked, although there was a lock, and Jerrie thought involuntarily of the little key lying with the other articles on the dead woman's person.

To unclasp the bag required a little strength, for the steel was covered with rust; but it yielded at last to Jerrie's strong fingers; and the bag came open, disclosing first some square object carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief which had been white in its day, but which now was yellow and soiled by time.

At this, however, Jerrie scarcely looked, for her eye had fallen upon a package of papers lying beneath it--papers folded with care, and securely tied with a bit of faded blue ribbon.
Seating herself upon the bench where she had been sleeping when Peterkin's voice aroused her, Jerrie untied the package, and then began to read, first slowly, as if weighing every word and sentence, then faster and faster, until at last it seemed that her burning eyes, from which the hot tears were streaming like rain, fairly leaped from page to page, taking in the contents at a glance, and comprehending everything.
When she had finished, she sat for a moment rigid as a corpse, and then, with a loud, glad cry, which made the very rafters ring, and went floating out upon the summer air, "Thank Heaven, I have found my mother!" she fell upon her face, insensible to everything.
How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came back to consciousness the sunlight had changed its position in the room, and she felt it was growing late.
Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of blood which has oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by her striking it against some hard substance when she fell, she looked about her for a moment in a bewildered kind of way, not realizing at first what had happened; and even when she remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to take it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could think more clearer.
Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she had found them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and put them into the bag.
'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think what it was.
Then, as her eye fell upon the first package she had taken out, and which was wrapped in a silk handkerchief, she took it up, and removing the covering, started as suddenly as if a blow had been dealt her, for there was the tortoise-shell box, with its blue satin lining, and its diamonds, which seemed to her like so many sparks of fire flashing in her eyes and dazzling her with their brilliancy.
Just such a box as this, and just such diamonds as these, Mrs.Frank Tracy had lost years ago, and as Jerrie held them in her hand and turned them to the light, till they showed all the hues of the rainbow, she experienced a feeling of terror as if she were a thief and had been convicted of the theft.

Then, as she remembered what she had read, she burst into a hysterical fit of laughing and crying together, and whispered to herself: 'I believe I am going mad like him.' After a time she arose, and with the bag on her arm and the diamonds in her hand, she started for home, with only one thought in her mind: 'I must tell Harold, and ask him what to do.' She had forgotten that he was to leave that afternoon on the train--forgotten everything, except the one subject which affected her so strongly, so that in one sense she might be said to be thinking of nothing, when, as she was walking with her head bent down, she came suddenly face to face with Harold, who, with his satchel in his hand, was starting for the train due now in a few minutes.
'Jerrie,' he exclaimed, 'how late you are! I waited until the last minute to say good-bye.