“That I am prepared to do.”

“Then I shall take you where you can find entertainment, such as it is.”

“First, this man wishes to speak to Miss Kelso, the nurse,” said Cartwright.  “He is a friend of hers.”

“You can see her but only at a distance,” the Doctor answered.  “I must keep you at least twenty feet away from her.  Come with me.”

They proceeded to the stricken house.  The Doctor entered and presently Bim came out.  Her eyes filled with tears and for a moment she could not speak.  She wore a white dress and cap and was pale and weary.  “But still as I looked at her I thought of the saying of her father that her form and face reminded him of the singing of birds in the springtime, she looked so sweet and graceful,” Samson writes in his diary.

“Why didn’t you let me know of your troubles?” he asked.

“Early last summer I wrote a long letter to you,” she answered.

“It didn’t reach me.  One day in June the stage was robbed of its mail down in Tazewell County.  Your letter was probably on that stage.”

“Harry’s death was the last blow.  I came out here to get away from my troubles—­perhaps to die.  I didn’t care.”

“Harry is not dead,” said Samson.

Her right hand touched her forehead; her lips fell apart; her eyes took on a look of tragic earnestness.

“Not dead!” she whispered.

“He is alive and well.”

Bim staggered toward him and fell to her knees and lay crouched upon the ground, in the dusky twilight, shaking and choked with sobs, and with tears streaming from her eyes but she was almost as silent as the shadow of the coming night.  She looked like one searching in the dust for something very precious.  The strong heart of Samson was touched by the sorrowful look of her so that he could not speak.

Soon he was able to say in a low, trembling voice: 

“In every letter he tells of his love for you.  That article in the paper was a cruel mistake.”

After a little silence Bim rose from the ground.  She stood, for a moment, wiping her eyes.  Her form straightened and was presently erect.  Her soul resented the injustice she had suffered.  There was a wonderful and touching dignity in her voice and manner when she asked:  “Why didn’t he write to me?”

“He must have written to you.”

Sadly, calmly, thoughtfully, she spoke as she stood looking off at the fading glow in the west: 

“It is terrible how things can work together to break the heart and will of a woman.  Write to Harry and tell him that he must not come to see me again.  I have promised to marry another man.”

“I hope it isn’t Davis,” said Samson.

“It is Davis.”

“I don’t like him.  I don’t think he’s honest.”

“But he has been wonderfully kind to us.  Without his help we couldn’t have lived.  We couldn’t even have given my father a decent burial.  I suppose he has his faults.  I no longer look for perfection in human beings.”