him!" As she opened the
door and passed in, she felt as though he had been away on a long
journey and that this might be the hour of his return.

Inside Madeira sat at his desk, Bruce Grierson's letter spread out
before him, the ghost of his torture. At night he heard it move, with a
spectral rustling, under his pillow where he kept it. By day it writhed,
a small, hot thing, over his heart. He had tried again and again to
destroy it. Everything else that had got in his way he had destroyed,
but this he had not destroyed. He was trying to destroy it now, but he
returned it to his pocket, unable to destroy it, ruled by it, when he
raised his eyes and saw his daughter before him. She had not been
without foresight even in her shame and sorrow. She had taken great
pains to gown herself especially for him, especially to establish her
influence over him. He held out his arms to her lovingly. In the
sickness of soul and body now upon him he had turned more and more to
her; she had to be with him almost constantly.

"You look so sweet," he said. "You are sweetest like this. I love you
like this." Despite the relief that came when with her, he talked
nervously, his mouth jerking. His hands wandered to her head, and he
held her face and peered at her. "Sally, I wish I was a girl like you,"
he said, "girls look so peaceful. Business tangles a man,--just to have
peace, Sally."

"It will come Father, it will come. Father, Piney rode in from the hills
just now, and he brought me news."

He could feel the tremor of her lithe body against his breast, and he
moved quickly and uneasily, suspecting danger. His dreams had so long
been terror-fraught that he was all nerves and suspicion. "News of what,
Sally?" The whitest, deadest voice, for so simple a question; on his
face the most awful strain! She drew back on his knee and looked at him
steadily, lovingly, and his eyes dropped and his hands began to drum on
the chair-arm.

"Father," she said, "Piney has heard a long story. He was hid on the
bluff-side, up at Redbud, and he heard a letter read at the shack there,
a dead man's letter."

"A dead--oh, God bless you--wait--Sally, did that move? eh, what
foolishness is this, a dead man's letter? What dead man? eh? what dead
man?"

"Bruce Grierson, father."

"They lie! They lie! Let them prove it!"

"Ah, that was what I told Piney, Father! I knew, I knew that you could
explain it. And you can now, and you will, Father?" She was re