This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive me--though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club. One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their testimony as true--being a cocksure. A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the fellow-beings whom you know. Those _you_ doubt ought to be doubted and those _you_ trust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures--perhaps all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure. You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you in your outlook upon life: "_Then gently scan your brother man_ * * * * * _To step aside is human._" I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience, striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one of those noticeable men--a broken cocksure. Your deeply obliged and very grateful, EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS _June 30, 1912._ DEAR BEVERLEY: About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him as your lawyer.