him was filled
with a fusty heat, and as he came in, partly dazed by the change of
temperature, Grant did not see the other man who sat amidst the
tobacco-smoke beside the glowing stove. He sank into a hide chair limply,
and when Breckenridge glanced at him inquiringly, with numbed fingers
dragged a wallet out of his pocket.

"Yes," he said, "I got the dollars. I don't know that it was quite the
square thing, but with Harper's wife and the Dutchman's children 'most
starving in the hollow, I felt I had to take them."

Breckenridge made a little warning gesture, and the man behind the stove,
reaching forward, picked up a packet that had dropped unnoticed by the
rest when Grant took out the wallet.

"You seem kind of played out, Larry, and I guess you didn't know you
dropped the thing," he said.

Grant blinked at him; for a man who has driven for many hours in the cold
of the Northwest is apt to suffer from unpleasant and somewhat bewildering
sensations when his numbed brain and body first throw off the effect of
the frost.

"No," he said unevenly. "Let me alone a minute. I didn't see you."

The man, who was one of the homesteaders' leaders in another vicinity, sat
still with the packet in his hand until, perhaps without any intention of
reading it, his eyes rested on the address. Then he sat upright suddenly
and stared at Grant.

"Do you know what you have got here, Larry?" he asked.

Grant stretched out his hand and took the packet, then laid it upon the
table with the address downwards.

"It's something that dropped out of the wallet," he said.

The other man laughed a little, but his face was intent. "Oh, yes, that's
quite plain; but if I know the writing it's a letter with something in it
from Torrance to the Sheriff. There's no mistaking the way he makes the
'g.' Turn it over and I'll show you."

Grant laid a brown hand on the packet. "No. Do you generally look at
letters that don't belong to you, Chilton?"

Breckenridge saw that Grant was recovering, and that the contemptuous
manner of his question was intentional, and guessed that his comrade had
intended to sting the other man to resentment, and so lead him from the
point at issue. Chilton coloured, but he persisted.

"Well," he said, "I guess that one belongs to the committee. I didn't mean
to look at the thing, but, now I'm sure of it, I have to do what I can for
the boys who made me their executive. I don't ask you how you got it,
Larry."

"I