He got his first disappointment when there was no letter for him.  He told himself it was some unavoidable delay in the mails—­Kate had written all right—­there would be two letters for him to-morrow.  Then he noticed the paper addressed to him in a strange hand.

He opened it eagerly.  A wavy ink-line caught his eye.  “Western author delights large audience.”  Jim Dawson’s face glowed with pride.  “My girl!” he murmured, happily.  “I knew it.”  He wanted to be alone when he read it, and, folding it hastily, put it in his pocket and did not look at it again until he was on the way home.  The rain still fell drearily and spattered the page as he read.

His heart beat fast with pride as he read the flattering words—­his girl had made good, you bet!

Suddenly he started, almost crushing the paper in his hands, and every bit of color went from his face.  “What’s this?  ’Unhappily married ’—­ ‘borne with heroic cheerfulness.’” He read it through to the end.

He stopped his horses and looked around—­he did not know, himself, what thought was in his mind.  Jim Dawson had always been able to settle his disputes without difficulty or delay.  There was something to be done now.  The muscles swelled in his arms.  Surely something could be done!...

Then the wanton cruelty, the utter brutality of the printed page came home to him—­there was no way, no answer.

Strange to say, he felt no resentment for himself; even the paragraph about the old lover, with its hidden and sinister meaning, angered him only in its relation to her.  Why shouldn’t the man admire her if he was an old lover?—­Kate must have had dozens of men in love with her—­why shouldn’t any man admire her?

So he talked and reasoned with himself, trying to keep the cruel hurt of the words out of his heart.

Everyone in his household was asleep when he reached home.  He stabled his team with the help of his lantern, and then, going into the comfortable kitchen, he found the lunch the housekeeper had left for him.  He thought of the many merry meals he and Kate had had on this same kitchen table, but now it seemed a poor, cold thing to sit down and eat alone and in silence.

With his customary thoughtfulness he cleared away the lunch before going to his room.  Then, lamp in hand, he went, as he and Kate had always done, to the children’s room, and looked long and lovingly at his boy and girl asleep in their cots—­the boy so like himself, with his broad forehead and brown curls.  He bent over him and kissed him tenderly—­Kate’s boy.

Then he turned to the little girl, so like her mother, with her tangle of red curls on the pillow.  Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to his room and put her in his own bed.

“Mother isn’t putting up a bluff on us, is she, dearie?” he whispered as he kissed the soft little cheek beside his own.  “Mother loves us, surely—­it is pretty rough on us if she doesn’t—­and it’s rougher still on mother!”