ad yours later. This one
you'd best read now. It's just a line as you'll see."

He held the letter out and Steve accepted it. And Ross watched him all
the time as he drew the note from its cover and perused it. The moment
of shock had passed, and the fierce light in Steve's eyes had died out,
leaving in its place a stony frigidity which gave the other a feeling of
unutterable regret. He would have been thankful for some passionate
outburst, some violent display. He felt it would have been more natural,
and he would have known better how to deal with it. But there was none.
Steve returned the letter to its envelope and remained silently
regarding the superscription.

"It's a bad letter," Ross went on. "If I thought Nita had written it
herself I'd say you're well rid of something that would have cursed the
rest of your life. But the stuff that's written there is the stuff that
comes out of Garstaing's rotten head. I'd bet my soul on it. She says
her marriage with you was a mistake. She didn't know. She had no
experience when she married you. She needs the things the world can show
her. The North is driving her crazy. All that muck. It's the sort of
stuff that hasn't a gasp of truth in it. If there was you need to thank
God you're quit of her. No. That hound of hell told her what to say.
Poor little fool. He's got her where he wants her, and she's as much
chance as an angel in hell. She went in the night, and they took a
storming night for it. There was two feet of snow on the ground, and
more falling. How she went we can't guess. There wasn't a track or a
sign in the morning, and it went on storming for days, so even the
police couldn't follow them up. The whole thing was well planned, and
Garstaing took no sort of chances. He got away with nearly fifty
thousand dollars of Indian money, and, so far, hasn't left a trace. We
don't know to this day if he made north, south, east, or west. All we
know are these two letters, that they got away in a 'jumper' and team,
and that Nita and the kiddie were with him."

"Say, Steve," Ross went on after a moment's pause, his voice deepening
with an emotion he could no longer deny. "I handed you a big talk of
seeing your Nita and the little kid safe till you got back. We did all
we knew. Millie and the gals did all they knew. Nita wanted for nothing.
The things that were good enough for my two we didn't reckon good enough
for her, and we saw she had one better all the time. Happy? Gee,