Bruce is earning a great reputation but insists on staying in Crampville. He has been called to Albany twice during the month to perform some special operation. He finds time to run in on us nearly every day. Susan and Ellis do not change: they are quite the happiest couple we have--though they both do miss you terribly. You never mention the native girls. Are they attractive, lovely? Do not let one of them fascinate you. We need you here, Dick,--Susan and Ellis, Father Jennings, the foreigners--all of us. DEANE. His deft fingers fumbled as he folded the letter and locked it in the drawer. Vainly smoothing at the lock of hair which always stuck out from the crown of his head, he stared vacantly at the lamp shade, oblivious to the entrance of the silent, morose Matak, who carried the bottle of boiled drinking water into the bedroom and then went out for the night. A hoarse ghekko lizard croaked its raucous six-song from a rafter overhead: a giant bat flapped through an open window, fluttered, crazy-winged, thrice about the big room and blundered through another window into the night: the low voweled voices of native passersby floated up from the dark street. But Terry heard nothing, nor felt the scent-laden breezes which roused the heat-soaked town to life.... He was walking up Main Street again, with rifle and snowshoes and fox, of a Sunday morning just as the heavy church doors swung wide to the emerging congregation.... A strong gust flickered the lamp. He rose, slid shut the exposed window and returned to his desk. In a few moments he took pen and paper, and wrote. DEANE-DEAR:-- Your letters come to me across the thousands of miles of land and sea, carried by sooty train and boat, buried in a dross of mail in prosy canvas sacks: I open them with the delight one feels when he brushes aside the mat of damp and frosty withered leaves to find the timid beauty of arbutus. You think, perhaps, you might grow fond of these people? I know that you would love this Gulf as I do. The humid heat of the day oppresses me but little: I love the sparkling hours of dawn, the cool of the evenings; the great tangled stretches of green which clothe the slopes from sea to the edge of the mountains that loom gray in the distance, like the rim of the world. And I like the courageous planters, toiling that the world may have its hemp: the young-old wild tribes, emerging from their primitive mental shallows, a bit bewildered, pathetic. Yes, I think that you would like it all, too, though--sometimes--I am not quite sure.