ly passed in its decay to Roy.

"You've got that letter?" he said.

I told him that I had the very letter, that it had got wet in the river;
I had dried it in the sun, and here it was.

"How did you get it?" he asked.

I told him all the conversation with Marsh, and how I was to give it to
Cynthia and the message that went along with it.

The two men came over to me and took the lantern and the letter from my
hands, Jud holding the light and Ump turning the envelope around in his
fingers, peering curiously. They might have been some guardians of a
twilight country examining a mysterious passport signed right but writ
in cipher, and one that from some hidden angle might be clear enough.

Presently they handed the letter gravely back to me and set the lantern
down in the leaves. Jud was silent, like a man embarrassed, and Ump
stood for a moment fingering the buttons on his blue coat.

Finally he spoke. "What's in it?" he said.

"I don't know," I answered. I was sure that the man's face brightened,
but it might have been a fancy. Loud in the hooting of a principle, we
sometimes change mightily when it comes to breaking that principle
bare-handed.

"Are you goin' to look?" he said.

The letter was lying in my hand. I had but to plunge my fingers into the
open envelope, but something took me by the shoulder. "No," I answered,
and thrust the envelope in my pocket.

I take no airs for that decision. There was something here that these
men did not like to handle, and, in plain terms, I was afraid.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ORBIT OF THE DWARFS

We slept that night in the front room of Roy's tavern, and it seemed to
me that I had just closed my eyes when I opened them again. Ump was
standing by the side of the bed with a candle. The door was ajar and the
night air blowing the flame, which he was screening with his hand. For a
moment, with sleep thick in my eyes, I did not know who it was in the
blue coat. "Wake up, Quiller," he said, "an' git into your duds."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"There's devilment hatchin', I'm afraid," he answered. "Wait till I wake
Jud."

He aroused the man from his snoring in the chimney corner, and I got
into my clothes. It was about three o'clock and grey dark. I looked over
the room as I pulled on the roundabout borrowed of Roy. Ump's bed had
not been slept in, and there was about him the warm smell of a horse.

Jud noticed the empty bed. "Ump," he said, "you ain't been asl