pstairs.

The carefully prepared bedchamber was in great disorder. The
bedclothes were pulled from the bed and lay in a heap near by; towels,
the soiled linen that Larry had discarded for the fresh, that had
been placed in the bureau drawers, was rolled in a bundle and flung on
the hearth.

This aspect of the room did not surprise Mary-Clare. Larry generally
dropped what he was for the moment through with, but there was more
here than heedless carelessness. Drawers were pulled out and empty.
The closet was open and empty. There was a finality about the scene
that could not be misunderstood. Larry was gone in a definite and
sweeping manner.

Dazed and perplexed, Mary-Clare went to the closet and suddenly was
made aware, by the sight of an empty box upon the floor, that in her
preparation of the room she had left that box, containing the old
letters of her doctor, on a shelf and that now they had been taken
away!

What this loss signified could hardly be estimated at first. So long
had those letters been guide-posts and reinforcements, so long had
they comforted and soothed her like a touch or look of her old friend,
that now she raised the empty box with a sharp sense of pain. So might
she gaze at Noreen's empty crib had the child been taken from her.

Then, intuitively, Mary-Clare tried to be just, she thought that Larry
must have taken the letters because of old and now severed connections
They _were_ his letters, but----

Here Mary-Clare, also because she was just, considered the other
possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to
come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingratitude. This
possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was
inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right--oh! _so_
right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was gone; the
letters were gone.

Mary-Clare began to tremble. The cold room, all that had so deeply
moved her was shaking her nerves. Then she thought that in his hurry
Larry might have overturned the box--the letters might be on the shelf
still. Quickly she went into the closet and felt carefully every
corner. The letters were not there.

Then with white face and chattering teeth she turned and faced
Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way
to the room where she had heard sounds--she had seen Larry fleeing on
the lake road as she came over the fields from the Point.

"Wha