“Dear Mr. Anderson—­Mr. Delaine has given me your message and read me some of your letter to him.  He has also told me what he knew before this happened—­we understood that you wished it.  Oh!  I cannot say how very sorry we are, Philip and I, for your great trouble.  It makes me sore at heart to think that all the time you have been looking after us so kindly, taking this infinite pains for us, you have had this heavy anxiety on your mind.  Oh, why didn’t you tell me!  I thought we were to be friends.  And now this tragedy!  It is terrible—­terrible!  Your father has been his own worst enemy—­and at last death has come,—­and he has escaped himself.  Is there not some comfort in that?  And you tried to save him.  I can imagine all that you have been doing and planning for him.  It is not lost, dear Mr. Anderson.  No love and pity are ever lost.  They are undying—­for they are God’s life in us.  They are the pledge—­the sign—­to which He is eternally bound.  He will surely, surely, redeem—­and fulfil.

“I write incoherently, for they are waiting for my letter.  I want you to write to me, if you will.  And when will you come back to us?  We shall, I think, be two or three days here, for Philip has made friends with a man we have met here—­a surveyor, who has been camping high up, and shooting wild goat.  He is determined to go for an expedition with him, and I had to telegraph to the Lieutenant-Governor to ask him not to expect us till Thursday.  So if you were to come back here before then you would still find us.  I don’t know that I could be of any use to you, or any consolation to you.  But, indeed, I would try.

“To-morrow I am told will be the inquest.  My thoughts will be with you constantly.  By now you will have determined on your line of action.  I only know that it will be noble and upright—­like yourself.

     “I remain, yours most sincerely”

     “ELIZABETH MERTON.”

Anderson pressed the letter to his lips.  Its tender philosophising found no echo in his own mind.  But it soothed, because it came from her.

He lay dressed and wakeful on his bed through the night, and at nine next morning the inquest opened, in the coffee-room of the hotel.

The body of the young constable was first identified.  As to the hand which had fired the shot that killed him, there was no certain evidence; one of the police had seen the lame man with the white hair level his revolver again after the first miss; but there was much shooting going on, and no one could be sure from what quarter the fatal bullet had come.