view of me.  I know he suffers—­and I shall never be able to tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven.  In fact, I can’t explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for my long letters.  I try to keep you posted in what I’m going through, so that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie.  I can’t tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that she doesn’t yet understand.

“The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven’t said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn’t.  Pride and sore feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can’t help it.  I don’t mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but they know enough to set them guessing.  They are jolly nice about it, too, even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days.  Little Green—­the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told you about him—­and his wife can’t do enough for me, and I know they mean it.”

There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.

“I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private affairs are not easily settled up.  This city grows so fast that I have had a good part of my savings in real estate.  I am getting rid of it by degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage.  I may say that I am doing very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my trial.  I hope you don’t mind my referring to it, because I look forward to it with something you might almost call glee.  To get back where I started will be like waking from a bad dream.  I can’t believe that Justice will make the same mistake twice—­and even if she does I would rather she had the chance.  I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and Warren.  I’ve long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle, though I didn’t like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the other way.  He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried me for two.  He wasn’t half a bad old chap, either—­old Gramm—­and it was one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so long.  The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband.  I believe the moment came when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance—­and he just did for him.  His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.  Nobody could doubt that.  In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years.  I think there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they will find to support it.  Now that the old chap is dead I should have less scruple in following it up—­especially if the old lady is gone too.  She was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort.  I liked him.”