"We are four days out from New York--shall call at Matthew Town to-day. Another eight days will bring us to Puerto Colombia; then for the river trip which will take me within thirty miles of the camp in the mountains. When I am up at the mines I shall write again. My address will be Puerto Andes, Colombia, the port of the Company. If some day, when I go down the trail to send off my report, I should find a letter from you, I should go back the happier. "Meanwhile I am, "Faithfully yours, "KIRKE WALDRON." Dorothy went over and stood by the window, gazing out into the September night. It was an unpretentious letter enough, but she liked it--liked it very much. He had gone back to the beginning, picked up the one link between them in their past, the fact that they had been schoolmates. He had dared to remind her of his poverty, of his awkward schoolboy personality, and of the fact that even in those days he had cared how she might regard him. Well, as for the poverty, she knew his family; knew that it was of good stock, that his parents were people of education and refinement, and that circumstances wholly honourable had been the cause of their lack of resources. Should she answer the letter? How should she not answer it? Delay, then, lest he think her too eager with her reply? Why?--when she knew as well as he, and he as well as she, that the thing was already done, that the mutual attraction had been of the sort which holds steadily to the end. Yet, being a woman, she could not fling herself into his arms at the first invitation. And indeed he had not invited. He had counted on her wish to begin at the beginning and play the beautiful, thrilling play through to the end, as if it were not already decided how it was to come out. The fact that she knew how it was to come out would not make it less the interesting play--in a world where, after all, strange things happen, so that no man may see the end from the beginning, nor count upon as inevitable an outcome which all the fates may combine to threaten and to thwart. So she delayed a little before she wrote. She let one ship, two ships, sail without her message, so that it would not be at the first tramping of the trail into Puerto Andes that he should find the letter. When it finally left her hands it was a very little letter after all, and one which it could not be imagined would take three days to write--as it had! "DEAR MR. WALDRON: I think I know quite well that the little girl of the curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was like that small girl to stamp her ridiculous foot; she has gone on stamping it, more or less, all her life. But I believe she has done some smiling, too.