l please give to her. Do you see my hero often? I
think of him, dream of him, and my heart will never know a perfect home
until his love has built a mansion for it."

The letter was fluttering in the giant's hand. "Who--who--what does she
mean?"

"She means you, stupid!" Mrs. Cranceford cried.

He looked up, dazed; he put out his hand, he grabbed his hat, he
snatched the door open and was out in the wind and the rain.

CHAPTER XXI.

With rain-soaked sand the road was heavy, and to walk was to struggle,
but not so to the giant treading his way homeward. Coming, he had felt
the opposition of the wind, the rain and the mushy sand, but returning
he found neither in the wind nor in the sand a foe to progress. His
heart was leaping, and with it his feet were keeping pace. In his hand
he held the letter; and feeling it begin to cool in his grasp, he
realized that the rain was beating upon it; so, holding in common with
all patient men the instincts of a woman, he put the wet paper in his
bosom and tightly buttoned his coat about it. Suddenly he halted; the
pitiful howling of a dog smote his ear. At the edge of a small field
lying close to the road was a negro's cabin, and from that quarter came
the dog's distressful outcry. Jim stepped up to the fence and listened
for any human-made noise that might proceed from the cabin, but there
came none--the place was dark and deserted. "They have gone away and
left him shut up somewhere," he mused, as he began to climb the fence.
The top rail broke under his weight, and his mind flew back to the day
when he had seen Louise in the road, confronted by the burly leader of
a sheepfold, for then with climbing a fence he had broken the top rail.

He found the dog shut in a corn-crib, and the door was locked. But with
a jerk he pulled out the staple, thinking not upon the infraction of
breaking a lock, but glad to be of service even to a hound.

"Come out, old fellow," he called, and he heard the dog's tail thrashing
the corn husks. "Come on."

The dog came to the door, licking at the hand of his rescuer; and Jim
was about to help him to the ground when a lantern flashed from a corner
of the crib. "What are you doing here?" a voice demanded.

A white man stepped forward and close behind him a negro followed. "What
are you doing here?" the white man again demanded.

"Getting a dog out of trouble."

"Getting yourself into trouble, you'd better say. What right have you to
pok