This caused Sweetwater to feel serious himself.  Upon what result might he calculate?  What would happen to this hardy soul, when the fact he so scornfully repudiated, was borne in upon him, and he saw that the disdain which had antagonised him was a mere device—­a cloak to hide the secret heart of love and eager womanly devotion?  Her death—­little as Brotherson would believe it up till now—­had been his personal loss the greatest which can befall a man.  When he came to see this—­when the modest fervour of her unusual nature began to dawn upon him in these self-revelations, would the result be remorse, or just the deadening and final extinction of whatever tenderness he may have retained for her memory?

Impossible to tell.  The balance of probability hung even.  Sweetwater recognised this, and clung, breathless, to his loop-hole.  Fain would he have seen, as well as heard.

Mr. Brotherson read the first letter, standing.  As it soon became public property, I will give it here, just as it afterwards appeared in the columns of the greedy journals: 

  “Beloved: 

“When I sit, as I often do, in perfect quiet under the stars, and dream that you are looking at them too, not for hours as I do, but for one full moment in which your thoughts are with me as wholly as mine are with you, I feel that the bond between us, unseen by the world, and possibly not wholly recognised by ourselves, is instinct with the same power which links together the eternities.

“It seems to have always been; to have known no beginning, only a budding, an efflorescence, the visible product of a hidden but always present reality.  A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of your name.  Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood, of God’s creatures.  One afternoon of perfect companionship—­one flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each other’s soul, and the miracle was wrought.  We had met, and henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the severing of a mutual bond.  One hand, and one only, could do that now.  I will not name that hand.  For us there is nought ahead but life.

  “Thus do I ease my heart in the silence which conditions impose
  upon us.  Some day I shall hear your voice again, and then-”

The paper dropped from the reader’s hand.  It was several minutes before he took up another.

This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it: 

  “My friend: 

“I said that I could not write to you—­that we must wait.  You were willing; but there is much to be accomplished, and the silence may be long.  My father is not an easy man to please, but he desires my happiness and will listen to my plea when the right hour comes.  When you have won your place—­when you have shown yourself to be the man I feel you to be, then my father will recognise your worth, and the way