I guess you'll have to try what you can do.' And so Jerrie's message, 'I need you,' went across the continent, and brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was Judge St.Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she wished the judge to say.
'Tell him everything,' she said, 'and how much I want him here; and tell him, too, of Maude, whose life hangs on a thread.

That may bring him sooner.' It was three days before Jerrie went again to the Park House, and then Tom came for her, saying Maude was failing very fast.

The shock which had come upon her so suddenly with regard to Jerrie's birth and the suspicions resting upon Harold had shortened the life nearing its close, and the moment Jerrie entered the room she knew the worst, and with a storm of sobs and tears knelt by the sick girl's couch and cried: 'Oh, Maude, Maude, I can't bear it.

I'd give up everything to save you.
Oh, Maude, Maude, you don't know how much I love you!' Maude was very calm, though her lips quivered a little and the tears filled her eyes as she put her hand caressingly upon Jerrie's golden hair.

A great change had come over Maude since the night when she heard Jerrie's strange story--a change for the better some might have thought, although the physician who attended her gave no hope.