beside her now, his shrewd counsel would have cleared away the
mists of doubt and indecision which had closed about her.

But since he was no longer there to be appealed to, she had turned
instinctively to Herrick, and, somehow, he had failed her. He had not
given her a definite expression of his own belief. She had been humanly
craving to hear that he, too, believed in Garth, notwithstanding the
evidence against him--that he had some explanation to offer of that
ghastly tragedy of the court-martial episode. And instead, he had only
hazarded some tolerant suggestions--sympathetic to Garth, it is true,
but not carrying with them the vital, unqualified assurance she had
longed to hear.

In spite of this, she knew that Herrick's friendship with Garth had
remained unbroken by the knowledge of the Indian Frontier story. The
personal relations of the two men were unchanged, and she felt as though
Miles were withholding something from her, observing a reticence
for which she could find no explanation. He had been very kind and
understanding--it would not have been Miles had he been otherwise--but
he had not helped her much. In some curious way she felt as though he
had thrown the whole onus of coming to a decision, unaided by advice,
upon her shoulders.

She returned to Sunnyside oppressed with a homesick longing for Patrick.
The two years which had elapsed since his death had blunted the edge of
her sorrow--as time inevitably must--but she still missed the shrewd,
kindly, worldly-wise old man unspeakably, and just now, thrown back upon
herself in some indefinable way by Miles's attitude, her whole heart
cried out for that other who was gone.

She wondered if he knew how much she needed him. She almost believed
that he must know--wherever he might be now, she felt that Patrick would
never have forgotten the child of the woman whom, in this world, he had
loved so long and faithfully.

With an instinctive craving for some tangible memory of him, she
unlocked the leather case which held her mother's miniature, together
with the last letter which Patrick had ever written; and, unfolding the
letter, began to read it once again.

Somehow, there seemed comfort in the very wording of it, in every
little characteristic phrase that had been Patrick's, in the familiar
appellation, "Little old pal," which he had kept for her alone.

All at once her fingers gripped the letter more tightly, her attentions
riveted by a certain passag