Latimer's heart seemed physically to turn over in his side. He had never known she had had a line of handwriting in her possession. This must be some scrap of paper, some last, last words she clung to with such anguish of desperation that she could not tear herself from them, and so had died leaving them in their secret hiding-place. The thought was a shock. The effort it cost him to regain his self-control was gigantic. But he recovered his outward calm. "You had better go home and change your clothing," he said, as coldly as he had spoken before. "You are not a young man or a strong one, and you may kill yourself. You are making a mistake about me; but if you will give me your address I will see you again." "I thort ye would--mebbe," said Stamps. "I thort mebbe ye would. They're worth it." And he scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper with a stump of a pencil--producing both rapidly from his pocket--and thrusting it into Latimer's hand, trotted away contentedly down the long wet street. CHAPTER XXXVI As he entered his rooms, Latimer glanced round at Baird's empty chair and wished he had found him sitting in it. He walked over to it and sat down himself--simply because it was Baird's chair and suggested his presence. Latimer knew how he would have turned to look at him as he came in, and that he would at once have known by instinct that the old abyss had been re-opened. "If he were here," he thought, "he would tell me what to do." But he knew what he was going to do. He must buy the little hoosier's silence if it was to be bought. He should see the letters. Through all those months she had hidden them. He could imagine with what terror. She could not bear to destroy them, and yet he knew there must have been weeks she did not dare to go near their hiding-place. They must have been concealed in some cranny of the cabin. How she must have shuddered with dread when he had accidentally approached the spot where they lay concealed. He recalled now that several times he had been wakened from his sleep in the middle of the night by hearing her moving about her room and sobbing. She had perhaps crept out of her bed in the darkness to find these scraps of paper, to hold them in her hands, to crush them against her heart, to cover them with piteous kisses, salt with scalding tears. On one such night he had risen, and, going to the closed door, had spoken to her through it, asking her if she was ill. "No, no, Lucien," she had cried out, "but--but I am so lonely--so lonely." She had told him the next day that the sound of the wind soughing in the pines had kept her from sleep, and she had got up because she could not bear to be still and listen.