“Jeff said you wanted me. Here I be,” came at that moment from Uncle Zach, who was followed by his wife with her big kitchen apron on, her sleeves above her elbows and a patch of flour on her face. “Wall, I’ll be dumbed,” he began, when he saw the diamonds. “These must be the stones I’ve hearn tell on,” he said, taking one of the ear-rings from its satin bed and turning it in the sun until a hundred sparks of light danced on the wall and on the floor. “I reckon these cost money,—hundreds, maybe.” “Hundreds!” Mrs. Tracy repeated scornfully, “Thousands are nearer the truth.” “You don’t say so,” and Uncle Zach gasped as he looked at the stones and wondered where the money was in them. Holding the jewel up to his wife’s ear he asked how she would like to wear it. “Don’t be a fool,” she said, “and put the ear-ring back before you drop it and break it and have it to pay for.” At this everyone laughed except Mrs. Tracy, who was too intent upon business to think of the absurdity of breaking her diamond. “They are in a way heirlooms,” she said, “brought from India and given to me on my wedding day. They are to be my daughter’s when she marries.” She was looking at Craig who did not seem as much impressed as Mark. To him there was a fascination about those diamonds, which seemed like so many eyes confronting him, and he was glad when Mrs. Tracy closed the box and shut them from his sight. “You want to put ’em in the safe, do you?” Uncle Zacheus said, “Wall, there ain’t no better one in the state than mine. Burglar proof unless they blow it up, and Mark would hear ’em before they got very far at that.” “Does he sleep in the office?” Mrs. Tracy asked, and Uncle Zach replied, “No, ma’am; but in the room j’inin’. That linter you may have noticed is his bedroom.” “How many know the combination?” was Mrs. Tracy’s next question, and Uncle Zach replied, “Nobody but Mark and me, and—yes, one more,—Dot. She had to know, but land sakes, she can no more unlock it than a child. I have tough work at it myself. Mark is your man.” Mark had a feeling that Mrs. Tracy distrusted him, and he suggested that she might feel safer if her diamonds were in the vault of the bank. “No,” she answered quickly. “I prefer to have them where I can assure myself of their safety any moment.” “Forty times a day if you want to. Mark will unlock it for you,” Uncle Zach suggested. “Won’t you, Mark?” The young man did not answer. He was standing with his arms folded and a somber look in his eyes, until they rested upon Helen, who was close to him, and who, with a shrug of her shoulders, said in a low tone, “Don’t mind mamma. She is so fussy about her diamonds that she will scarcely trust them with any firm in New York. _I_ should let them lie around loose.”