er, was tossed
into a mop that resembled the usual appearance of my own. His eyes
were very deep under their heavy lashes but of the brilliancy of the
stars in the blackness of a dark night.

"Sit down here under the light beside me," was his next command to me,
and he reached out one of his slender and powerful hands and drew me
down into a chair very close beside him.

"What is it?" I asked as my head came so close to his that I felt the
warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.

"Hold these two fragments of paper together and translate the French
written upon them literally," he said to me as he handed me two small
pieces of paper upon which there was writing.

And this is what I discovered to be written:

"Honored Madam:

"The one at the head of all has sent me to this place to
inspect grazing lands and make report. I send in a report of
what is not here and the signing of the papers by your
Gouverneur Faulkner must be done quickly in blindness before a
discovery of what is not--"

"It is written to a woman," I said very quietly as I made a finish of
reading.

"Yes, boy, to a woman. I have made my last fight to--to hold an old
belief, which in some way seemed to be--be one of my foundation
stones. The General is right: they are all alike, the soft, beautiful,
lying things. The truth is not in them, and their own or a man's honor
is a plaything. That piece of paper was sent me by a man up in the
mountains of Old Harpeth, who loves me with the same blood bond that I
love you, boy, all on account of a gun struck up in the hands of his
enemy. Here's the note he sent with it.

"Bill, we cotched a furren man fer a revenue up by the still
at Turkey Gulch and this was in his pocket. I made out to read
yo name. I send it. The man is kept tied. What is mules worth?
Send price and what to do with this man critter by son Jim.
Hell, Bill, they ain't no grazing fer five thousand mules on
Paradise Ridge, but I know a place.
Jim Todd."

"What is the significance of this paper, my Gouverneur Faulkner?" I
asked after I had made the attempt to translate to myself the very
peculiar writing he had given to me.

"I do not know just exactly myself, Robert," answered my Gouverneur
Faulkner as he dropped his head upon his hands while he rested his
elbows on the polished table among its scattered papers. "I am
convinced now that this mule contract business is the pl