oad, bent to examine the marks dimly visible in
the half darkness.

"Look-a-here," said he, "there's been a car here too--the same car,
with the busted tire! They come up in that wagon from my place after
they burned me out. They must of taken her out of the wagon and put
her in the car, and like you say, they're maybe a couple of hundred
miles away by now. Oh, my God A'mighty, Wid, what has you and me done
to that pore girl!"

Wid only laid the large hand again on his shoulder. "It'll be
squared," said he.

Their rude meal was prepared in silence, and eaten in silence. Sim
Gage felt in his pocket, and drawing out the letter he had received,
smoothed out the envelope on the table top.

"It's addressed to her, Wid," said he after a time, "and she ain't
here."

"I don't see why we oughtn't to open it and read it," said Wid. "Some
one'd have to anyhow, if she was here, for she couldn't read, herself."

Sim, by means of a table knife, opened the envelope.

"You read it, Wid," said he. "You can read better'n I can." And so
Wid accepted Sim's conventional fiction, knowing he could neither read
nor write.

"Dear Mary," said Anne's letter, "I got to write to you. I wisht you
hadn't went away when you did and how you did, for, Mary, I feel so
much alone.

"You know when you started out I was joking you about Charlie
Dorenwald. I told you, even if you did have an inside chance you maybe
might not be married any sooner than I was. That was just a little
while ago. So far as it's all concerned you can come right on back.
There's nothing doing now between Charlie and I.

"You know he was foreman in the factory. He ought to of had money laid
up but he didn't. On Installments I'd soon have got a place fixed up,
though Charlie and me was going to fix it up on Installments. But I
got to talking with him, right away after you had left, it was all
about the war and I said to him, 'Charlie, why didn't you go over?' He
says one thing and he says another. Well you know that sort of got me
started and at last we had it, and do you know when he got rattled he
began to talk Dutch to me? Well, I talked turkey to him. One thing
and another went on and Charlie and me we split up right there.

"'I couldn't join the army noways,' he says, 'they wouldn't take me. I
had flat feet.'

"'You got a flat tire, that's what ails you,' I says to him, 'Well now
I wouldn't marry you at all, not if you was the last man, whic