he
didn't tell her she will never know. She's not a morbid person, and
won't be likely to bother about it."

"No; I ain't afraid of her brooding on what she doesn't know. It's the
fear it may fly up and strike her when she ain't looking that worries
me, and it worried the Professor, too. That was why he told me. I guess
when he talked to me that time he knew his heart was going to stop
suddenly some day. And he'd got a hint that somebody was interested in
watching Sylvia--sort o' keeping track of her. And there was conscience
in it; whoever it is or was hadn't got clean away from what he'd done.
Now I had a narrow escape from letting Sylvia see this letter. It was
stuck away in a tin box in Andrew's bedroom, along with his commissions
in the Navy. I was poking round the house, thinking there might be
things it would be better not to show Sylvia, and I struck this box, and
there was this letter, stuck away in the middle of the package. I gave
Sylvia the commissions, but she didn't see this. I don't want to burn it
till you've seen it. This must have been what Andrew spoke to me about
that time; it was hardly before that, and it might have been later. You
see it isn't dated. He started to tear it up, but changed his mind, so
now we've got to pass on it."

She pushed the letter across the table to Harwood, and he read it
through carefully. He turned it over after the first reading, and the
word "Declined," written firmly and underscored, held him long--so long
that he started when Mrs. Owen roused him with "Well, Daniel?"

He knew before he had finished reading that it was he who had borne the
letter to the cottage in Buckeye Lane, unless there had been a series of
such communications, which was unlikely on the face of it. Mrs. Owen had
herself offered confirmation by placing the delivery of the dateless
letter five years earlier. The internal evidence in the phrases
prescribing the manner in which the verbal reply was to be sent, and the
indorsement on the back of the sheet, were additional corroboration. It
was almost unimaginable that the letter should have come again to his
hand. He realized the importance and significance of the sheet of paper
with the swiftness of a lightning flash; but beyond the intelligence
conveyed by the letter itself there was still the darkness to grope in.
His wits had never worked so rapidly in his life; he felt his heart
beating uncomfortably; the perspiration broke out upon his forehead