She opened this one first, and this is what she read: 

“MY DEAR MISS DALE—­This letter will undoubtedly surprise you.  It is a strange Christmas letter for me to have to write.  You may have forgotten my name, but I am the woman detective whom you met in Boardman’s.  I hardly know how to pen the words, but—­I put that ring into your bag!

    “I am a very wretched woman, but to make this confession to you
    may, in a measure, at least, tend to soften the bitterness that
    rankles in my heart.

    “It would be useless for me to try to explain why I did you such
    a wrong—­perhaps if I could talk with you it would be different.

“Try to forgive me—­try to know how wretched I am—­sick, without
work and without means.

“But even pity seems bitter to me now—­life has all gone wrong, and only the thought of your innocent face, and the black guilt I tried to fasten on you, has given me the strength to write this letter.

“Ah, what a mockery Christmas is to the unfortunate!

“Yours, in sorrow,

“LOUISE DEARING.”

CHAPTER XXII

STORMBOUND AT TANGLEWOOD

Dorothy dropped the letter in her lap.  She was awed, surprised, distressed.  Then, Miss Brooks did not take the ring?  And why should the woman detective do such a thing?

For an instant only that thought occupied her.  The next she pitied Miss Dearing.

“Poor woman!” she sighed to herself.  “After all, perhaps she is really a victim of circumstances.  And what a letter!  If I only could help her—­see her before Christmas.”

A smile, unbidden, stole across Dorothy’s face as she pictured all the tasks she had undertaken to accomplish “before Christmas.”

“Luckily there are a few days left,” she concluded “One can crowd a great many things into two real, living days.”

She hurried upstairs to read the letter again in seclusion.  The positive tone of sorrow in the missive touched her heart.  There certainly did seem many things to do, but here was plainly an emergency case.  If she could manage to go to the city, obtain Miss Dearing’s address from the store, go to see her, and then stop at Dalton on her way back—­”

“I ought to be able to do that,” she told herself.  “And it would be such a joy to take away all Tavia’s worry before Christmas Day.”

Then came the recollection that she really knew nothing to tell Squire Travers—­she really did not know what Tavia’s trouble was.  All the girl’s conversation on that point amounted to nothing more than inferences, vague and uncertain.

“I am positive Tavia thinks I know all about it,” concluded Dorothy, “and I have just a mind to ask her outright.  It would be so much easier than beating about the bush this way.”

“Doro!  Doro!” screamed Roger at her door.  “Come on!  Get ready!  We’re going out—­for another—­Christmas tree!  Out to ghost park.”