ten miles over the rain-soaked roads to Auburn to get his daily letter.

Every day she had written to him long letters, full of vital interest
to him. He read them over and over again.

"Nobody really knows how well Kate can write, who has not seen her
letters to me," he thought proudly. Absence had not made him fonder of
his wife, for every day he lived was lived in devotion to her. The
marvel of it all never left him, that such a woman as Kate Marks, who
had spent her life in the city, surrounded by cultured friends, should
be contented to live the lonely life of a rancher's wife.

He got his first disappointment when there was no letter for him. He
told himself it was some unavoidable delay in the mails--Kate had
written all right--there would be two letters for him to-morrow. Then
he noticed the paper addressed to him in a strange hand.

He opened it eagerly. A wavy ink-line caught his eye. "Western author
delights large audience." Jim Dawson's face glowed with pride. "My
girl!" he murmured, happily. "I knew it." He wanted to be alone when he
read it, and, folding it hastily, put it in his pocket and did not look
at it again until he was on the way home. The rain still fell drearily
and spattered the page as he read.

His heart beat fast with pride as he read the flattering words--his
girl had made good, you bet!

Suddenly he started, almost crushing the paper in his hands, and every
bit of color went from his face. "What's this? 'Unhappily married '--
'borne with heroic cheerfulness.'" He read it through to the end.

He stopped his horses and looked around--he did not know, himself, what
thought was in his mind. Jim Dawson had always been able to settle his
disputes without difficulty or delay. There was something to be done
now. The muscles swelled in his arms. Surely something could be
done!...

Then the wanton cruelty, the utter brutality of the printed page came
home to him--there was no way, no answer.

Strange to say, he felt no resentment for himself; even the paragraph
about the old lover, with its hidden and sinister meaning, angered him
only in its relation to her. Why shouldn't the man admire her if he was
an old lover?--Kate must have had dozens of men in love with her--why
shouldn't any man admire her?

So he talked and reasoned with himself, trying to keep the cruel hurt
of the words out of his heart.

Everyone in his household was asleep when he reached home. He stabled
his team with the