"Because I was afeered she might fall in love with Armstrong. I supposed she'd know his writin', but w'en she didn't I jest let her keep 'em anyway. I knowed it'd all come out somehow; there is a God above us in spite of all the damned scoundrels on earth like this un." "Are these letters addressed to my dead wife?" asked Newbold. "They are," answered Enid Maitland; "look and see." "And did Mr. Armstrong write them?" "He'll deny it, I suppose," answered Kirkby. "But I am familiar with his handwriting," said Maitland. Taking the still unopened packet from Newbold he opened it, examined one of the letters and handed them all back. "There is no doubt about it," he said. "It's Armstrong's hand, I'll swear to it." "Oh, I'll acknowledge them," said Armstrong, seeing the absolute futility of further denial. He had forgotten all about the letters. He had not dreamed they were in existence. "You've got me beat between you, the cards are stacked against me, I've done my damndest--" and indeed that was true. Well, he had played a great game, battling for a high stake he had stuck at nothing. A career in which some good had mingled with much bad was now at an end. He had lost utterly, would he show himself a good loser? "Mr. Armstrong," said Newbold, quietly extending his hand, "here are your letters." "What do you mean?" "I am not in the habit of reading letters addressed to other people without permission and when the recipient of them is dead long since, I am doubly bound." "You're a damned fool," cried Armstrong contemptuously. "That kind of a charge from your kind of a man is perhaps the highest compliment you could pay me. I don't know whether I shall ever get rid of the doubt you have tried to lodge in my soul about my dead wife, but--" "There ain't no doubt about it," protested old Kirkby earnestly. "I've read them letters a hundred times over, havin' no scruples whatsomever, an' in every one of 'em he was beggin' an' pleadin' with her to go away with him an' fightin' her refusal to do it. I guess I've got to admit that she didn't love you none, Newbold, an' she did love this here wuthless Armstrong, but for the sake of her reputation I'll prove to you all from them letters of hisn, from his own words, that there didn't live a cleaner hearted, more virtuous, upright feemale than that there wife of yourn, even if she didn't love you. It's God's truth an' you kin take it from me." "Mr. Armstrong," cried Enid Maitland, interposing at this juncture, "not very long ago I told you I liked you better than any man I had ever seen, I thought perhaps I might have loved you, and that was true. You have played the coward's part and the liar's part in this room--" "Did I fight him like a coward?" asked Armstrong. "No," answered Newbold for her, remembering the struggle, "you fought like a man." Singular perversion of language and thought there! If two struggled like wild beasts that was fighting like men!