I wish I didn't have to write you, leather Louise, what happened next,
at the same time as the birthday, but I can't sleep unless I do. Would
God be so cruel to me as to let me get just this one little taste of
being happy and then take it away from me? I won't believe it!

This is what happened, set down in black and white, and I can draw no
conclusions from it. I refuse! As Roxanne and I stood in the living
hall, under the stern old Byrd grandmother, giggling and having a
good, girl time like I have just been learning to do, suddenly the
door opened and the Idol stood in the light we had lighted, with his
face so pale I thought he was going to faint.

"Roxy," he said, not seeming to notice me, "you haven't been in my
shed working with my bottles, have you? Or could Lovey have got in? I
have the key and the window is barred, as I always keep it."

"Oh, no, Douglass, I haven't been near the shed this week. My key is
here on the hook in the left-hand bookcase," and she reached behind
her, took it, and showed it to him. "I know Lovey hasn't been there
either, because we can trust him on honor. Oh, what is the matter?" As
Roxanne asked the question she was trembling all over, but not in the
deadly cold way I was, I felt sure. She couldn't have stood it and
lived.

"Some one has been in the shed, taken samples of all my material,
including the steel shavings that came from the last melting, and my
notebook is gone. The process is stolen, Roxy, and all the sacrifices
gone for nothing. I don't care for myself--but--you." His head was up
in the same old portrait pose, but his arms trembled as he held them
out to Roxanne.

I stood still and cold and never said one word, but a pain hit into my
heart that I didn't know I was strong enough to stand and still live.

"When did you find it out?" I asked; and I was surprised at the cool
note that sounded in my voice and made it like Father's when he talks
business.

"Just now," he answered me over Roxanne's head that was buried on his
shoulder. "I stopped down-town to help Judge Luttrell with a brief
that he was writing and came home only a few minutes ago. The thief
was in the shed between the time I went on the hay ride and now. I was
in the shed just before I started."

I don't know how I said good-night to them; but I did the best I
could, and came home through the moonlight with a great heaviness of
heart and feet. I dreaded to see Father, and yet longed for him in a
wa