who was brought up by
his relations, was often at the Grange. It's a little, old-fashioned,
half-ruinous place, a mile or two from where we live in the North of
England. It belongs to her mother's folks, but I think there was still
a feud between them and her father's people, who brought her up to earn
her living. We saw a good deal of each other, and fell in love as boy
and girl. Well, when I went back, one winter, after I'd been here two
years, Agatha was at the Grange again, and we decided then that I was
to bring her out as soon as I had a home she could live in to offer
her."

He broke off for a moment, and there was a trace of embarrassment in
his manner when he went on again. "Perhaps I ought to have managed it
sooner," he added. "Still, things never seem to go quite as one would
like with me, and you can understand that a dainty, delicate girl
brought up in comfort in England would find it rough out here."

Wyllard glanced round the bare room in which he sat, and into the
other, which was also furnished in a remarkably primitive manner.

"Yes," he assented, "I can quite realise that."

"Well," said his companion, "it's a thing that has been worrying me a
good deal of late, because, as a matter of fact, I'm not much farther
forward than I was four years ago. In the meanwhile, Agatha, who has
some talent for music, was in a first-class master's hands. Afterwards
she gave lessons, and got odd singing engagements. A week ago, I had a
letter from her in which she said that her throat was giving out."

He stopped again for a moment, with trouble in his face, and then
fumbling under his pillow produced a letter, which he carefully folded.

"We're rather good friends," he said. "You can read that part of it."

Wyllard took the letter, and a suggestion of quickening interest crept
into his eyes as he read. Then he looked up at Hawtrey.

"It's a brave letter--the kind a brave girl would write," he said.
"Still, it's evident that she's anxious."

There was silence for a moment or two, which was only broken by Sally
clattering about the stove. Dissimilar in character, as they were, the
two were firm friends, and there had been a day when, as they worked
upon a dizzy railroad trestle, Hawtrey had held his comrade fast when a
plank slipped away. He had, it was characteristic, thought nothing of
the matter, but Wyllard was one who remembered things of that kind.

"Now," said Hawtrey, "you see my trouble.