ck, soft, no cry, no laugh,
just listen.' Yes. Oh! now all will be well."

Margot almost hushed her very breathing. Her uncle awake, sane, asking
for her! Her face was radiant, flushed, eager, a face to brighten the
gloom of any sick room, however dark.

But this one was not dark. Joe knew his patient's fancies. He had
forgotten none. One of them was the sunshine and fresh air; and though
in his heart he believed that these two things did a world of harm,
and that the ill-ventilated and ill-lighted cabins of his own people
were more conducive to recovery, he opposed nothing which the master
desired. He had experimented, at first, but finding a close room
aggravated Mr. Dutton's fever, reasoned that it was too late to break
up the foolish habits of a man's lifetime; and as the woodlander had
lived in the sunlight so he would better die in it, and easier.

If she had been a trained nurse Margot could not have entered her
uncle's presence more quietly, though it seemed to her that he must
hear the happy beating of her heart and how her breath came fast and
short. He was almost too weak to speak at all, but there was all the
old love, and more, in his whispered greeting:

"My precious child!"

"Yes, uncle. And such a happy child because you are better."

She caught his hand and covered it with kisses, but softly, oh! so
softly, and he smiled the rare sweet smile that she had feared she'd
never see again. Then he looked past her to Angelique in the doorway
and his eyes moved toward his desk in the corner. A little fanciful
desk that held only his most sacred belongings and had been Margot's
mother's. It was to be hers some day, but not till he had done with
it, and she had never cared to own it since doing so meant that he
could no longer use it. Now she watched him and Angelique wonderingly.

For the woman knew exactly what was required. Without question or
hesitation she answered the command of his eyes by crossing to the
desk and opening it with a key she took from her own pocket. Then she
lifted a letter from an inner drawer and gave it into his thin
fingers.

"Well done, good Angelique. Margot--the letter--is yours."

"Mine? I am to read it? Now? Here?"

"No, no. No, no, indeed! Would you tire the master with the rustlin'
of paper? Take it else. Not here, where ever'thin' must be still as
still."

Mr. Dutton's eyes closed. Angelique knew that she had spoken for him
and that the disclosure which that letter