Routt and Agnes, Wint and Joan, all four together, investigated doodle bugs this day. They had a good-natured time of it till Jack Routt caught an ant and dropped it into one of the pits to see the monster at the bottom in action. The sight of the ant’s swift end was not pleasant to Joan; and she looked at Routt in a critical way. He and Agnes seemed to think it rather a joke on the ant. Wint and Joan moved away and left them there and went clambering up among the rocks, and picked wintergreen and chewed it, and came out at last on the upper level, on top of the Caves. They looked down from there and shouted to the others below. And when they tired of that, they sat down and talked to each other for a while. That was one pursuit they never tired of. Wint had been meaning to ask Joan something. It concerned that letter which he had received the day after his election as Mayor. The letter had been anonymous; a friendly, loyal, sympathetic little note. He had torn it up angrily, as soon as he read it, because he was in no mood for good advice that day, and the letter had given good advice. He could remember, even now, snatches of it. He had wondered who wrote it; and this wonder had revived, during the last few days, and he had considered the matter, and asked a question or two. Now he asked Joan whether she had written it; and Joan hesitated, and flushed a little, and then said, looking at him bravely: “Yes, I wrote it, Wint.” He said in an embarrassed way: “But that was when you had told me you would have no more to do with me.” She nodded. “I tore it up,” he said. “I thought you would.” She smiled a little. “But I hoped you--would remember it, too.” “I do,” Wint told her. “You said I had ‘the finest chance a man ever had to retrieve his mistakes,’ and you told me to buckle down.” “Yes, I remember,” she agreed. Wint looked at her, and his heart was pounding softly. “You said there were some who would watch me--lovingly,” he reminded her. For a minute she did not speak; then she nodded her head slowly; and she said: “Yes.” Her eyes met his honestly. Wint had been very sure, before he asked her, that she had written the letter; he had meant to remind her of this word, and if she confessed it, to go on. But now that he had come thus far, he found that he could go no farther. It was not that she forbade him; not that there was any prohibition in her eyes. It was something within himself that restrained him. Something that held his tongue, bade him not risk his fortune--lest, perchance, he lose it. Any one but a blind man would have seen there was no danger of his losing it; but Wint, in this matter, was blind--for the immemorial reason. So all the courage that had brought him thus far deserted him, and he only said: “Oh!” That did not seem to Joan to call for any answer, so she said nothing; and after a moment Wint got hurriedly to his feet and exclaimed: “Well, I’m getting hungry. Better be getting back, hadn’t we?”