"For some time I have had it in mind to make Sallie Pruitt a present, but as I have no idea as to what she might like best, I enclose twenty dollars, which you will please give to her. Do you see my hero often? I think of him, dream of him, and my heart will never know a perfect home until his love has built a mansion for it." The letter was fluttering in the giant's hand. "Who--who--what does she mean?" "She means you, stupid!" Mrs. Cranceford cried. He looked up, dazed; he put out his hand, he grabbed his hat, he snatched the door open and was out in the wind and the rain. CHAPTER XXI. With rain-soaked sand the road was heavy, and to walk was to struggle, but not so to the giant treading his way homeward. Coming, he had felt the opposition of the wind, the rain and the mushy sand, but returning he found neither in the wind nor in the sand a foe to progress. His heart was leaping, and with it his feet were keeping pace. In his hand he held the letter; and feeling it begin to cool in his grasp, he realized that the rain was beating upon it; so, holding in common with all patient men the instincts of a woman, he put the wet paper in his bosom and tightly buttoned his coat about it. Suddenly he halted; the pitiful howling of a dog smote his ear. At the edge of a small field lying close to the road was a negro's cabin, and from that quarter came the dog's distressful outcry. Jim stepped up to the fence and listened for any human-made noise that might proceed from the cabin, but there came none--the place was dark and deserted. "They have gone away and left him shut up somewhere," he mused, as he began to climb the fence. The top rail broke under his weight, and his mind flew back to the day when he had seen Louise in the road, confronted by the burly leader of a sheepfold, for then with climbing a fence he had broken the top rail. He found the dog shut in a corn-crib, and the door was locked. But with a jerk he pulled out the staple, thinking not upon the infraction of breaking a lock, but glad to be of service even to a hound. "Come out, old fellow," he called, and he heard the dog's tail thrashing the corn husks. "Come on." The dog came to the door, licking at the hand of his rescuer; and Jim was about to help him to the ground when a lantern flashed from a corner of the crib. "What are you doing here?" a voice demanded. A white man stepped forward and close behind him a negro followed. "What are you doing here?" the white man again demanded. "Getting a dog out of trouble." "Getting yourself into trouble, you'd better say. What right have you to poke about at night, breaking people's locks?" "None at all, I am forced to acknowledge. I hardly thought of what I was doing. My only aim was to help the dog." "That will do to tell." "Yes, I think so. And by the way, what right have you to ask so many questions? You don't live here."