. "Courage, soldier!" he added, as he opened
the door by which he had entered, through which Burlingame had gone, and
strode away towards the town of Askatoon, feeling somehow in his heart
that before midnight his luck would turn.

From the dining-room Kitty had watched him go. "Courage, soldier!" she
whispered after him, and she laughed; but almost immediately she threw
her head up with a gasping sigh, and when it was lowered again two tears
were stealing down her cheeks.

With an effort she conquered herself, wiped away the tears, and said
aloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach,
"Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a fool you are!"

Entering the room Crozier had left, she went to the desk with the
green-baize top, opened it, and took out the fateful letter which Mona
Crozier had written to her husband five years ago. Putting it into her
pocket she returned to the dining-room. She stood there for a moment
with her chin in her hands and deep reflection in her eyes, and then,
going to the door of her mother's sitting-room, she opened it and
beckoned. A moment later Mrs. Crozier and the Young Doctor entered the
dining-room and sat down at a motion from her. Presently she said:

"Mrs. Crozier, I have here the letter your husband received from you
five years ago in London."

Mrs. Crozier flushed. She had been masterful by nature and she had had
her way very much in life. To be dominated in the most intimate things
of her life by this girl was not easy to be borne; but she realised that
Kitty had been a friend indeed, even if not conventional. In response to
Kitty's remark now she inclined her head.

"Well, you have told us that you and your husband haven't made it up.
That is so, isn't it?" Kitty continued.

"If you wish to put it that way," answered Mona, stiffening a little in
spite of herself.

"P'r'aps I don't put it very well, but it is the stony fact, isn't it,
Mrs. Crozier?"

Mona hesitated a moment, then answered: "He is very upset concerning
the land syndicate, and he has a quixotic idea that he cannot take money
from me to help him carry it through."

"I don't quite know what quixotic means," rejoined Kitty dryly. "If it
wasn't understood while you lived together that what was one's was the
other's, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes to
the name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don't see how you could
expect him, after your five years' desertion, to take money