charm of the place or because Margaret was there, he wondered, that he
felt so happy? By all means he must follow her. Why should he not?

He looked at the clambering rose-vine that covered one end of the house,
and noticed how it crept close to the window casement and caressed the
white curtain as it blew. Margaret must have such a vine at her window
in the house he would build for her. It might be but a modest house that
he could give her now, but it should have a rose-vine just like that;
and he would train it round her window where she could smell the
fragrance from it every morning when she awoke, and where it would
breathe upon her as she slept.

Margaret! How impatient he was to see her again! To look upon her dear
face and know that she was his! That her father and mother had been
satisfied about him and sent their blessing, and he might tell her so.
It was wonderful! His heart thrilled with the thought of it. Of course
he would go to her at once. He would start as soon as Rogers was through
with him. He would go to Ganado. No, Keams. Which was it? He drew the
letter out of his pocket and read it again, then replaced it.

The fluttering curtain up at the window blew out and in, and when it
blew out again it brought with it a flurry of papers like white leaves.
The curtain had knocked over a paper-weight or vase or something that
held them and set the papers free. The breeze caught them and flung them
about erratically, tossing one almost at his feet. He stooped to pick it
up, thinking it might be of value to some one, and caught the name
"Margaret" and "Dear Margaret" written several times on the sheet, with
"Walpi, Walpi, Walpi," filling the lower half of the page, as if some
one had been practising it.

And because these two words were just now keenly in his mind he reached
for the second paper just a foot or two away and found more sentences
and words. A third paper contained an exact reproduction of the letter
which Mrs. Tanner had given him purporting to come from Mrs. Brownleigh
to Margaret. What could it possibly mean?

In great astonishment he pulled out the other letter and compared them.
They were almost identical save for a word here and there crossed out
and rewritten. He stood looking mutely at the papers and then up at the
window, as though an explanation might somehow be wafted down to him,
not knowing what to think, his mind filled with vague alarm.

Just at that moment the servant appeare