What this loss signified could hardly be estimated at first. So long had those letters been guide-posts and reinforcements, so long had they comforted and soothed her like a touch or look of her old friend, that now she raised the empty box with a sharp sense of pain. So might she gaze at Noreen's empty crib had the child been taken from her. Then, intuitively, Mary-Clare tried to be just, she thought that Larry must have taken the letters because of old and now severed connections They _were_ his letters, but---- Here Mary-Clare, also because she was just, considered the other possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingratitude. This possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right--oh! _so_ right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was gone; the letters were gone. Mary-Clare began to tremble. The cold room, all that had so deeply moved her was shaking her nerves. Then she thought that in his hurry Larry might have overturned the box--the letters might be on the shelf still. Quickly she went into the closet and felt carefully every corner. The letters were not there. Then with white face and chattering teeth she turned and faced Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way to the room where she had heard sounds--she had seen Larry fleeing on the lake road as she came over the fields from the Point. "What's up?" she asked in her dull, even tones, while in her vacant eyes the groping, tender look grew. "Oh! Jan-an," Mary-Clare was off her guard, "the letters; my dear old doctor's letters--they are gone; gone." Her feeling seemed out of all proportion to the loss. "Who took 'em?" And then Jan-an did one of those quick, intelligent things that sometimes shamed sharper wits--she went to the hearth. "There ain't been no fire," she muttered. "He ain't burned 'em. What did he take them for?" This question steadied Mary-Clare. "I'm not _sure_, Jan-an, that any one has _taken_ the letters. You know how careless I am. I may have put them somewhere else." "If yer have there's no need fussing. I'll find 'em. I kin find anything if yer give me time. I have ter get on the scent." Mary-Clare gave a nervous laugh. "Just old letters," she murmured, "but they meant, oh! they meant so much. Come," she said suddenly, "come, I must dress and get breakfast." "I've et." Jan-an was gathering the bedclothes from the floor. She selected the coverlid and brought it to Mary-Clare. "There, now," she whispered, wrapping it about her, "you come along and get into bed downstairs till I make breakfast. You need looking after more than Noreen. God! what messes some folks can make by just living!" Things were reduced to the commonplace in an hour.