f might not be willing.

"I--well--I guess not," he said, at last. "It ain't just square to send a
little girl blindfold like that into a stranger's claim. We'll let some
one over twenty-one read the letters. You'll do, Max, and if it ain't all
right, you can stop up short."

So Lyster read the treasured message, all in the same feminine writing.
His sensitive face grew grave, and he turned compassionate glances toward
the helpless man as he read the letters, according to their dates. The
oldest one was the only one not sad. Its postmark was a little town many
miles to the south.

"DEAR OLD JOE: It's awful to be this near you, and know you are sick,
without being able to get to you. I just arrived, and your partner
has met me, and told me all about it. But I'll go up with him, just
the same; and when you are able to travel we can come down to a town
and be married, instead of to-day, as we had set on. So that's all
right, and don't you worry. Your partner, John Ingalls, is as nice as
he can be to me. Why did you not tell me how good looking he was?
Maybe you never discovered it--you slow, prosy old Joe! When you
wrote to me of that rich find you stumbled on, I was sorry you had
picked up a partner; for you always did trust folks too much, and I
was afraid you'd be cheated by the stranger you picked up. But I
guess that I was wrong, Joe; for he is a very nice gentleman--the
nicest I ever met, I think. And he talks about you just as if he was
your brother, and thought a heap of you. He tried to tease me some,
too--asked how you ever came to catch such a pretty girl as me! Then
I told him, Joe, that you never had to catch me--that I was little,
and hadn't any folks, and how you got your folks to give me a home
when you was only a boy; and that you was always like a big brother
to me till you made some money in the mines. Then you wrote and asked
me to come out and marry you. He just laughed, Joe, and said it was
not a brother's love that a wife wanted; but I don't think he knows
anything about that--do you? And, Joe, I came pretty near telling him
all about that richest find you made--the one you said you wanted me
to be the first to see. I thought, of course, you had told your
partner, just as you told me when you sent me the plan of it--what
for, I don't know, Joe, for I never could find it in the wide world,
even if there was any chance of my hunting for it alone.