Mrs. Huzzard was crying and whispering, "Poor dear!--poor child!" and even the voice of Lyster was not quite steady as he read. Those straggling, weak pencil marks had a pathos of their own to him. The letter, crossed and recrossed by the lines, was on two pages, evidently torn from the back of a book. "It seems a sacrilege to dive into a man's feelings and secrets like this," he said, ruefully. "It _is_! My only consolation is that I did it with good intent." "And, after all, not a plain trail found that will help us locate this man or his friends," decided Overton--"not a name we can really fasten to but the name on the envelope--Joe Hammond. It is too bad. Why, 'Tana! Good God! _'Tana!_" For the girl, who had uttered no word, but had listened to that last letter with whitened face and staring eyes, leaned against the wall at its close, and a little gasp from her drew their attention. She fell forward on her face ere Overton could reach her. "Tana, my girl, what is it? Speak!" he entreated. But the girl only whispered: "I know now! Joe--Joe Hammond!" and fainted dead away at the feet of the paralyzed man. CHAPTER XI. 'TANA AND JOE. "Just like a part in a play, captain--that's just the way it struck me," said Mrs. Huzzard, recounting the affair for the benefit of the postmaster of Sinna Ferry. "The man a-sitting there like a statue, with only his eyes looking alive, and that poor, scared dear a-falling down on the floor beside him, and looking as white as milk! I never had a notion she was so easy touched by people's troubles. It surely was a sorry story read from them three letters. I tell you, sir, men leave women with aching hearts many's the time," and she glanced sentimentally toward her listener; "though if there is one place more heart-rending to be deserted in than another, I think an Indian village would be the very worst. Just to think of that poor dear dying there in a place she didn't even know the name of." "Humph! I've an idea you are giving your sympathy to the wrong individual," decided the captain. "It must be easier even to die in some unknown corner than for a living soul to be shut up in a dead body, after the manner of this Harris, or Hammond, or whatever his name is. I guess, from the looks of things, he must have collapsed when that second letter reached him; had a bad stroke, and was just recovering somewhat when he strayed into this camp. Yes, madame, I've an idea he's had a harder row to hoe than the girl; and, then, it doesn't look as though he'd deserved it so much." "Mr. Dan is mightily upset over it, ain't he?"