, might hold some breath of the tragedy that had ghostlike
trailed her footsteps. Ann Westfall had kept the key until her death.
She had bravely put her brother's house in order at his tragic death
and transferred all the papers of value. The key hung now in a sliding
panel beneath the ledge of the desk. The spirit which had kept the old
room unchanged, even to the faded books of Orientalism and the old
pictures strangely mellowed, had led to the hiding of the key away from
vandal fingers.

Once Diane herself had unlocked the desk and peered timidly within.
She remembered now the faultless order of the few dry, uninteresting
papers, an ink well made of the skull of a tiny monkey, a bamboo pen, a
half-finished manuscript of wild adventure in some out-of-the-world
spot in the South Pacific. There had been nothing more. But the desk
was one of intricate drawers and panels.

With a sudden distaste for the food before her, Diane pushed the little
table back, lighted a small lamp and crossed to her father's desk. She
unlocked it with nervous fingers. The monkey skull, the bamboo pen,
the few irrelevant papers were all as she remembered them.

Diane glanced hurriedly over the scribbled manuscript of adventure with
a wild, choking sensation in her throat. There was no mention of the
Indian wife. Hurriedly she opened each tiny drawer and panel. They
were for the most part empty. Only in one, a small drawer within a
drawer, lay a faded packet of letters directed to Ann Westfall in the
hand that had penned the manuscript--Norman Westfall's.

CHAPTER LII

EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF NORMAN WESTFALL

Reluctantly, Diane opened the letters of long ago and read them:

Grant and I have had wild sport killing alligators with the Seminoles.
A wild, dark, unexplored country, Ann, these Florida Everglades! How I
wish you were with us! Tyson had an Indian guide, evoked somewhere
from the wild by smoke signals, waiting for us. We traversed miles and
miles of savage, uninhabitable marsh before at last we came to the
isolated Indian camp. Small wonder the Seminole is still unconquered.
It is a world here for wild men. I'll write as I feel inclined and
bunch the letters when there is an Indian going out to the fringe of
civilization.

We hunt the 'gators by night in cypress canoes. Grant sat in the bow
of our boat to-night with a bull's-eye lantern in his cap. The fan of
it over the silent, black water, the ey