"I'm trying to find out." Northrup spoke almost harshly. He wanted to quiet the girl. The last scrap of paper had been torn from an old, greasy bag and bore clever imitation. It was the last copy, Northrup believed, of what Jan-an said he had just carried away with him. Northrup grew hot and cold. He read the words and his brain reeled. It was an appeal, or supposed to be one, from a dead man to one whom he trusted in a last emergency. "So he's this kind of a scoundrel!" muttered Northrup, dazed by the blinding shock of the fear that became, moment by moment, more definite. "And he's taken the thing to her in order to get money." Northrup could grope along, but he could not see clearly. By temperament and training he had evolved a peculiar sensitiveness in relation to inanimate things. If he became receptive and passive, articles which he handled or fixed his eyes upon often transmitted messages for him. So, now, disregarding poor Jan-an, who rambled on, Northrup gazed at the letters near him, and held close the brown-paper scrap which was, he believed, the final copy before the finished production which was undoubtedly being borne to Mary-Clare now. Rivers would have a scene with his wife in the yellow house. With no one to interfere! Northrup started affrightedly, then realized that before he could get to the crossroads whatever was to occur would have occurred. Larry would return to the shack. There was every evidence that he had not departed finally. Believing that no one would disturb his place so late at night he had taken a chance and--been caught by the last person in the world one would have suspected. As an unconscious sleuth Jan-an was dramatic. Northrup let his eyes fall upon the girl with new significance. She had given him the power to set Mary-Clare free! Her dull, tear-stained face was turned hopefully to him; her straight, coarse hair hung limply on her shoulders--the old coat had slipped away and the ugly nightgown but partly hid the thin, scraggy body. Lost to all self-consciousness, the poor creature was but an evidence of faith and devotion to them who had been kind to her. Something of nobility crowned the girl. Northrup went around to her and pulled the old coat close under her chin. "It's all right, Jan-an," he comforted, patting the unkempt head. "Are them the letters he stole?" "Some of them, yes, Jan-an." "Kin I take 'em back to her?" "Not to-night. I think Rivers will take them back." "S'pose he won't." "He will." "You, you're going to fetch him one?" The instinct of the savage rose in the girl. "If necessary, yes!" Northrup shared the primitive instinct at that moment. "And now you trot along home, my girl, and don't open your lips to any one." "And you?" "I'll wait for Mr. Larry Rivers here!" "My God!" Jan-an burst forth. Then: "There's a sizable log back of the stove. Yer can fetch a good one with that." "Thanks, Jan-an. Go now."