“I’m not sleepy; I’ll stand guard,” the priest volunteered, and, disregarding further protest, he helped Alaire remove Dave’s coat.

Seeing that the bed was nothing more than a board platform covered with straw matting, Alaire folded the garment for a pillow; as she did so a handful of soiled, frayed letters spilled out upon the floor.

“Rest now, while you have a chance,” she begged of her husband.  “Just for a little while.”

“All right,” he agreed.  “Call me in—­an hour.  Couldn’t sleep—­ wasn’t time.”  He shook off his weariness and smiled at his wife, while his eyes filmed with some emotion.  “There is something I ought to tell you, but—­I can’t now—­not now.  Too sleepy.”  His head drooped again; she forced him back; he stretched himself out with a sigh, and was asleep almost instantly.

Alaire motioned the others out of the room, then stood looking down at the man into whose keeping she had given her life.  As she looked her face became radiant.  Dave was unkempt, unshaven, dirty, but to her he was of a godlike beauty, and the knowledge that he was hers to comfort and guard was strangely thrilling.  Her love for Ed, even that first love of her girlhood, had been nothing like this.  How could it have been like this? she asked herself.  How could she have loved deeply when, at the time, her own nature lacked depth?  Experience had broadened her, and suffering had uncovered depths in her being which nothing else had had the power to uncover.  Stooping, she kissed Dave softly, then let her cheek rest against his.  Her man!  Her man!  She found herself whispering the words.

Her eyes were wet, but there was a smile upon her lips when she gathered up the letters which had dropped from her husband’s pocket.  She wondered, with a little jealous twinge, who could be writing to him.  It seemed to her that she owned him now, and that she could not bear to share him with any other.  She studied the inscriptions with a frown, noticing as she did so that several of the envelopes were unopened—­either Dave was careless about euch things or else he had had no leisure in which to read his mail.  One letter was longer and heavier than the rest, and its covering, sweat-stained and worn at the edges, came apart in her hands, exposing several pages of type-writing in the Spanish language.  The opening words challenged her attention.

In the name of God, Amen,

Alaire read.  Involuntarily her eye followed the next line: 

Know all men by this public instrument that I, Maria Josefa Law, of this vicinity—­

Alaire started, Who, she asked herself, was Maria Josefa Law?  Dave had no sisters; no female relatives whatever, so far as she knew.  She glanced at the sleeping man and then back at the writing.

—­finding myself seriously ill in bed, but with sound judgment, full memory and understanding, believing in the ineffable mysteries of the Holy Trinity, three distinct persons in one God, in essence, and in the other mysteries acknowledged by our Mother, the Church—­