“Listen to this how she lit into me:  ’When you ask me to leave my husband you ask me to do a dishonorable thing—­’”

Fred heard no more—­he hung on to the seat of his chair with both hands, breathing hard, but the old man took no notice of him and read on: 

“’Fred is in every way worthy of your respect, but you have been utterly unjust to him from the first.  I will enjoy poverty and loneliness with him rather than endure every pleasure without him.’”

Fred’s world had suddenly righted itself—­he saw it all now—­this was the man she was writing to—­this was the man who had tried to induce her to leave him.

“I haven’t really anything against this Fred chap—­maybe his clothes were all right.  I was brought up in the lumber business, though, and I don’t take to flowered stockings and monograms—­I kept wondering how he’d look in overalls!  What was really wrong with me—­and you’ll never know how it feels until you have a girl of your own, and she leaves you—­was that I was jealous of the young gent for taking my girl when she was all I had.”

Fred suddenly understood many things; a fellow feeling for the old man filled his heart, and in a flash he saw the past in an entirely different light.

He broke out impetuously, “She thinks of you the same as ever, I know she does—­” then, seeing his mistake, he said, “I know them slightly, and I’ve heard she was lonely for you.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me?  She has always kept up these spunky letters to me, and said she was happy, and all that—­she liked to live here, she said.  What’s this Fred fellow like?” The old man leaned toward him confidentially.

“Oh, just so-so,” Fred answered, trying to make the stove take more wood than it was ever intended to take.  “I never had much use for him, and I know people wondered what she saw in him.”

The old man was glad to have his opinion sustained, and by a local authority, too.

“It wasn’t because he hadn’t money that I objected to him—­it wasn’t that, for I have a place in my business where I need a smart, up-to-date chap, and I’d have put him there quick, but he didn’t seem to have any snap in him—­too polite, you know—­the kind of a fellow that would jump to pick up a handkerchief like as if he was shot out of a gun.  I don’t care about money, but I like action.  Now, if she had taken a fancy to a brown-faced chap like you I wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t enough money to make the first payment on a postage stamp.  I kinda liked the way you let fly at me when I was acting contrary with you out there in the storm.  But, tell me, how does this Fred get on?  Is he as green as most Englishmen?”

“He’s green enough,” Fred agreed, “but he’s not afraid of work.  But come now, don’t you want to go to bed?  I can put you up for the night, what there’s left of it; it’s nearly morning now.”

The old man yawned sleepily, and was easily persuaded to go to bed.