“That’s you, Curly,” nodded Tom Osby.  “You’re the trusted henchman.”

“I’m damned if I am!” replied Curly.  “I’m nothin’ but a plain cow hand from the Brazos; but I don’t take ‘henchman’ from nobody!”

“Hush!” said his friend.  “This feller’s a genius.  If he don’t get side-tracked on Dead Shot Dick, or something of that kind, this letter is just as good as wrote, right now.”

“The good knight presses his signet ring on to the missive,” resumed Willie, “and his trusted cow hand wraps the missive in the folds of his cloak, and climbs on to his trusted steed, and flies far, far away, to the side of the beautiful queen.”

“That’s good!”

“And the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and says she, ‘My Gawd!’”

“Oh, now we’re gettin’ at it!” said Tom Osby.  “Say, this is pretty poor, ain’t it, Curly?”

“And then,” went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, “the beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the distant bedside of the sufferin’ knight.”

“She’ll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely,” said Tom Osby.  “You got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly?  But we’ll let it go at that.  She’s got to fly to the distant bedside somehow.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right,” agreed Willie, sweetly.  “She’ll fly.  She’ll come.  It’s always the same.  It’s always the same.”

“Write it down, Willie,” ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before him.  Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.

The latter balked in turn.  “What!  Have I got to start it for you?  Well, then, begin it, ‘Dear Madam!’”

Curly shook his head.  “You couldn’t never marry a woman writin’ to her that-a-way.”  And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the justice of the assertion.

“Leave it to Willie,” suggested Curly.  “He’ll get it started after a while.  Go ahead, Willie.  How did he say it to her, now, when he sent for the beautiful queen?”

Tom Osby’s pencil followed rapidly as it might.

“He writes,” said Willie, “like they always do.  He says:  ’Light of my heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.  I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know with no proof but my word.  If I have drawn apart from you, ’twas through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe.  If I have not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, ’tis for that reason I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the same.  If I have missed the dear sight of your face, ’twas because I could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor.  Heart’s Heart, and life of my life, could you not see?  I could not doom you to a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.’”

He passed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he heard speaking; but he went on.