“—­so I felt I ought to know about things, and let you know of what is going on.  There is more that I cannot tell you.  I wrote you much in my former letter—­much, I mean, about the man who will carry this letter, so unsuspiciously—­the man I shall yet repay if it lies within my power.  For the things he has done—­and for what he is—­for what he represents—­this is the man I hate more than anything or anyone else in the world.  You would understand me if you knew it all—­all!  Let him carry some word from you to Your loving sister, BETH.”

Van had read and comprehended the full significance of the lines before he realized some error had been made—­that this piece of Beth’s letter had been placed by mistake in the envelope for him to take, instead of the letter Glen had written.

He did not know and could not know that Bostwick, within, by the sick man’s side, had kept Glen stupid and hazy with drugs, that the one word “hate” had been “love” on the sheet he held in his hand till altered by the man from New York, or that something far different from an utterly despicable treachery towards himself had been planned in Beth’s warm, happy heart.

The thing, in its enormity, struck him a blow that made him reel, for a moment, till he could grasp at his self-control.  He had made no sign, and he made none now as he folded the sheet in its creases.

“I’m afraid you made some mistake,” he said.  “This is not the note from Mr. Kent.  Perhaps you will bring me the other.”

“What?” said the man, unaware of the fact that Bostwick had purposely arranged this scheme for putting the altered sheet in Van Buren’s hands.

“What’s that?” He glanced at the sheet in genuine surprise.  “Keerect,” he said.  “I’ll go and git you the letter.”

Van mounted his horse.  His face had taken on a chiseled appearance, as if it had been cut in stone.  He had ridden here through desert heat and flood, for this—­to fetch such a letter as this, to a man he had never seen nor cared to see, and whose answer he had promised to return.

He made no effort to understand it—­why she should send him when the regular mail would have answered every purpose.  The vague, dark hints contained in her letter—­hints at things going on—­things she could not tell—­held little to arouse his interest.  A stabbed man would have taken more interest in the name of the maker of the weapon, stamped on the dagger’s blade, than did Van in the detail of affairs between Glenmore Kent and his sister.  Beth had done this thing, and he had fondly believed her love was welded to his own.  She had meant it, then, when she cried in her passion that she hated him for what he had done.  Her anger that night upon the hill by Mrs. Dick’s had not been jealousy of Queenie, but rage against himself.  She was doubtless in love with Bostwick after all—­and would share this joke with her lover.

He shrugged his shoulders.  Luck had never been his friend.  By what right had he recently begun to expect her smile?  And why had he continued, for years, to believe in man or in Fate?  All the madness of joy he had felt for days, concerning Beth and the “Laughing Water” claim, departed as if through a sieve.  He cared for nothing, the claim, the world, or his life.  As for Beth—­what was the use of wishing to understand?