"He will write to Dick," she said. "I should like to read the letter when it comes, if I may." Myra promised, and so it rested; but when Jeffard's letter came, and Bartrow had shared its astounding news with his wife, Myra was for rescinding her promise. "I don't know why she shouldn't read it," said Dick. "She has always been more or less interested in him, and it will do her a whole lot of good to know that we were all off wrong. Jeffard's little slap at me hits her, too, but she won't mind that." "No," said Myra; "I was thinking of something else,--something quite different." "Is it sayable?" They were sitting on the steps of the extended porch. The night-shift was at work in the Myriad below, and the rattle and clank of a dump-car coming out postponed her answer. When the clangor subsided she glanced over her shoulder. "She can't hear," said Bartrow. "She's in the sitting-room reading to Uncle Steve." "I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too,--about Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the way I expected she would be." "What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently acclimated to bloom out of season. "Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?" "Sure." "How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day." "Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him back to Denver some way or other." "Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian at first, he will doubtless need one now." Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone. "Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once, and he was afraid he might do it again." "Will he?" asked the wife. "I guess not. I believe he has learned his lesson. More than that, Jim's as soft as mush on the side next the old man. If I can make out to tie Uncle Steve's welfare up in the deal, Garvin will come to the front like a man." "Where is Garvin now?" "He is down at the bunk-house." Myra rose. "I suppose you want to get it over with. Let me have the letter, if you won't need it." "What are you going to do?"