l me. I'll know from your face. They said she couldn't live--"

But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into
my face he snatched the letter from me like a madman.

"Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I _knew_ it! I told you they
couldn't fool me. No, sir. I felt all the time she'd make it. Why, I
knew it in my marrow!"

"What's the date?" I inquired.

"September thirtieth," he said. Then, as he realized how old it was, he
began to worry again.

"Why didn't they write later? They must know I'll eat my heart out.
Suppose she's had a relapse. That's it. They wrote too soon, and now
they don't dare tell me. She--got worse--died--months ago, and they're
afraid to let me know."

"Stop it," I said, and reasoned sanity back into him.

Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so
I went over to Eckert's and had a drink.

Sam winked at me as I came in. A man was reading from a letter.

"Go on. I'm interested," said the proprietor.

The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous
stage, but he began again:

"DEAR HUSBAND,--I am sorry to hear that you have been so
unfortunate, but don't get discouraged. I know you will make a good
miner if you stick to it long enough. Don't worry about me. I have
rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a
week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, just
across Bering Sea from where you are. If you don't find something
during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple?"

"That's what I call a persevering woman," said Eckert, solemnly.

"She's a business woman, too," said the husband. "All I ever got for
that room was seven-fifty a week."

It seems I'd missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out
Ollie Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be
alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose,
and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her
hand on his bowed head. She had followed the frontier enough to know the
signs.

"Oh, Mr. Prosser," she said, "I'm so sorry! Is it the little mother?"

"Yes," he answered, without moving.

"Not--not--" she hesitated.

"I don't know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was
very sick."

Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him,
forgetting herself, her life, his p