to her, as he put it in his pocket:

'Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some nonsense which
ought not to go, even if the sending it would do no harm, as it
certainly would.'

Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the letter to go
at all. She had remembered her promise to take it to him, and forgotten
that he had said it must not be sent lest it should do harm to Maude.
But it all came back to her now, and her tears fell like rain as she
stood for a moment irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every
other feeling. Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own
brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.

'Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?' she said, at last,
in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was
so like him when on his dignity.

And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with,
and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly
and naturally:

'Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It
is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you
in the Tramp House I thought that it must not be sent, but I have
changed my mind since then, and do not care. I am going to the office,
and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I
shall be in time for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so
worried. Do you take me for a villain?'

He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was
in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and
perplexed, and only half reassured.

'If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and
still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it
amounted to that,' Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward
the highway which led to the town.

Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing
so much that he knew its contents.

'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I
can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can,' he said, as he put it
again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of
its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her.
'I'll see how I feel when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted
from his horse before the door of the post-office.

The mail was just in, and the little room was