the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and
says she, 'My Gawd!'"

"Oh, _now_ we're gettin' at it!" said Tom Osby. "Say, this is pretty
_poor_, ain't it, Curly?"

"And then," went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, "the
beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the
distant bedside of the sufferin' knight."

"She'll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely," said Tom Osby. "You
got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly? But we'll let it go at that.
She's got to fly to the distant bedside somehow."

"Oh, that'll be all right," agreed Willie, sweetly. "She'll fly.
She'll come. It's always the same. It's always the same."

"Write it down, Willie," ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before
him. Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.

The latter balked in turn. "What! Have I got to start it for you?
Well, then, begin it, 'Dear Madam!'"

Curly shook his head. "You couldn't never marry a woman writin' to her
that-a-way." And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the
justice of the assertion.

"Leave it to Willie," suggested Curly. "He'll get it started after a
while. Go ahead, Willie. How did he say it to her, now, when he sent
for the beautiful queen?"

Tom Osby's pencil followed rapidly as it might.

"He writes," said Willie, "like they always do. He says: 'Light of my
heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.
I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know
with no proof but my word. If I have drawn apart from you, 'twas
through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe. If I have
not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, 'tis for that reason
I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the
same. If I have missed the dear sight of your face, 'twas because I
could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea
on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor. Heart's
Heart, and life of my life, could you not see? I could not doom you to
a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.'"

He passed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he
heard speaking; but he went on.

"'Now I lie here hurt to death,' says the good knight Lancelot. 'This
is the end. Now, at the time when truth must come from the soul, I say
to you, my queen'--she's always queen to him--'I say to you, I have
loved you more t