and things are cut
all along it."

"The Arrow lakes of the Columbia!" interrupted Overton--

"If the boy comes, and is to be trusted at all, he may tell me more;
that is my only hope of this reaching you. If you are not able to
make another plan (and he says your hands are powerless) remember, I
have the one you did make. If you can send me one word--one name of a
friend--I will try--try so hard. He would kill me if he knew, and I
would be glad of it, if I could only help you first. I feel that I
will never see you again.

"FANNIE."

Mrs. Huzzard was crying and whispering, "Poor dear!--poor child!" and even
the voice of Lyster was not quite steady as he read. Those straggling,
weak pencil marks had a pathos of their own to him. The letter, crossed
and recrossed by the lines, was on two pages, evidently torn from the back
of a book.

"It seems a sacrilege to dive into a man's feelings and secrets like
this," he said, ruefully. "It _is_! My only consolation is that I did it
with good intent."

"And, after all, not a plain trail found that will help us locate this man
or his friends," decided Overton--"not a name we can really fasten to but
the name on the envelope--Joe Hammond. It is too bad. Why, 'Tana! Good
God! _'Tana!_"

For the girl, who had uttered no word, but had listened to that last
letter with whitened face and staring eyes, leaned against the wall at its
close, and a little gasp from her drew their attention.

She fell forward on her face ere Overton could reach her.

"Tana, my girl, what is it? Speak!" he entreated.

But the girl only whispered: "I know now! Joe--Joe Hammond!" and fainted
dead away at the feet of the paralyzed man.

CHAPTER XI.

'TANA AND JOE.

"Just like a part in a play, captain--that's just the way it struck me,"
said Mrs. Huzzard, recounting the affair for the benefit of the postmaster
of Sinna Ferry. "The man a-sitting there like a statue, with only his eyes
looking alive, and that poor, scared dear a-falling down on the floor
beside him, and looking as white as milk! I never had a notion she was so
easy touched by people's troubles. It surely was a sorry story read from
them three letters. I tell you, sir, men leave women with aching hearts
many's the time," and she glanced sentimentally toward her listener;
"though if there is one place more heart-rending to be deserted in than
anothe