realized sweatingly how
difficult it might be to follow. Assuming that there had been a previous
meeting or meetings, or rather the passing acquaintance which was all
that the young woman's later betrayal of the man made conceivable, would
the writer of the accusing letter be willing to add to her burden of
responsibility by giving the true name and standing of the man whose
real identity--if she knew it--she had been careful to conceal in the
unsigned note to Mr. Galbraith? Broffin read the note again--"a
deck-hand, whose name on the mate's book is John Wesley Gavitt," was the
description she had given. It might, or it might not, be an
equivocation; but the longer Broffin dwelt upon it the more he leaned
toward the conclusion to which his theory and the few known facts
pointed. The young woman knew the man in his proper person; she had been
reluctant to betray him--that, he decided, was sufficiently proved by
the lapse of time intervening between the date of her note and its
postmark date; having finally decided to give him up, she had told only
what was absolutely necessary, leaving him free to conceal his real name
and identity if he would--and could.

Having come thus far on the road to convincement, Broffin knew what he
had to do and set about the doing of it methodically. A telegram to the
clerk of the _Belle Julie_ served to place the steamer in the lower
river; and boarding a night train he planned to reach Vicksburg in time
to intercept the witnesses whose evidence would determine roughly how
many hundreds or thousands of miles he could safely cut out of the
zigzag journeyings to which the following up of the hypothetical clew
would lead.

For, cost what it might, he was determined to find the writer of the
unsigned letter.

XVIII

THE ZWEIBUND

On his second visit to the sick man lodged in the padded luxuries of one
of the guest-rooms at Mereside, made on the morning following the
Grierson home-coming, Dr. Farnham found the hospital status established,
with the good-natured Swede installed as nurse, the bells muffled, and
Miss Margery playing the part of Sister Superior and dressing it, from
the dainty, felt-soled slippers to the smooth banding of her hair.

An hour later, however, it was the Margery of the Wahaskan Renaissance,
joyously clad and radiant, who was holding the reins over a big English
trap horse, parading down Main Street and smiling greetings to
everybody.

By one of the chan