She and Billy had gone to school together, played together and he always seemed like a big brother to her.  Once a boy had called her a half-breed and Billy promptly knocked him down and sat on his head while he manipulated a shingle.

Another time when they were quite small, the desire of her heart was to ride on the tricycle of a rich little boy who lived across the street.  But the pampered youth jeered at her pleadings and exultingly rode up and down before her.  Billy saw and bided his time till the small Croesus was alone.  He nabbed him, chucked him in a chicken-coop and stood guard for an hour while Sada rode gloriously.

Through college they were comrades and rivals.  Billy had to work his way, for he was the poor son of an invalid mother.  From college he had gone straight to a firm of rich manufacturers and was now one of the big buyers.

He had pleaded with her not to come to Japan.  He loved her.  He wanted her.  When she had persisted, he was furious and they had quarreled.  But she had thought she was right, then; she did not know how dear Billy was, how big and splendid.  She had written to him but seldom, nothing of her disappointment.  Maybe he had married.  She could not write now.  It would be too much like begging, when she was at bay, for the love she had refused when all was well.  No, she could not tell him.

We talked long and earnestly in that old garden, and the wind that sifted through the pine-needles and the waxy leaves was as gentle as if the spirit of Susan West had come to watch and to bless.

I gained a half promise from her that she would write to Billy at once, but I didn’t stop there.

Unsuspected by Sada I learned his full address, and Mate, I wrote a letter to the auburn-haired lover in Nebraska, in which I painted a picture that is going to cause something to happen, else I am mistaken in my estimate of the spirit of the West in general and William Weston Milton in particular.

I told him if he loved the girl to come as fast as steam would bring him; that I would help him at the risk of anything, though I have no idea how.  I have just returned from a solitary promenade to the post-office through the dark and lonely streets, so that letter will catch to-morrow’s American mail.

Sada told me that for some reason she had never mentioned Billy’s name to Uncle.  Now isn’t that a full hand nestling up my half-sleeve?  Uncle thinks the way clear as an empty race-track, and all he has to do is to saunter down the home stretch and gather in the prize-money.

Any scruple on the girl’s part will be relentlessly and carelessly brushed aside as a bothersome insect.  If she persists, there is always force.  He fears nothing from me.  I am a foreigner—­from his standpoint too crudely frank to be clever.