growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am
terribly worried about her; but she made me promise to say nothing
to father, and you must not, either; for he will see for himself
soon."

A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, and a document some
twenty years old, which the reader may have forgotten, but which one
person connected with this narrative has feared would come to light
every day in that time--and then this tedious business of introducing
documentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal Ward to
Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote and never mailed.
They were dated, sealed, addressed, and put away. This one was written
at midnight as the bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were
welcoming the year 1904. It begins:--

"MY VERY DEAREST: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the
old office of the _Banner_. I could only scribble you a little note
on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with
you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is
a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you,
but I feel that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks wired
me to come down. He has a mortgage on the _Banner_, and he feels
that things are not being properly managed, so he persuaded Mr.
Brownwell to give me a place as sort of manager of the paper at
twenty dollars a week--a sum that seems princely considering that I
was making only eighteen dollars in Chicago, and that it costs so
much less to live here. Hendricks guarantees my wages, so that
Adrian cannot stand me off. Hendricks has another motive for wanting
me to come here. The waterworks franchise will come up for renewal
June first of this year, and Mr. Hendricks is for municipal
ownership. Carnine and the State Bank are against municipal
ownership, because the water company does business with them, and as
they control the _Index_, they are preparing to make a warm fight
for the renewal of the old franchise. So there will be a hot time in
the old town this spring. But the miserable part of it is this. The
growth of the town has made it dangerous to use the present supply
station. The water must not come out of the mill-pond any longer, as
the town is tilted so that all the surface drainage goes into it,
and the sewers that drain into it, while they drain