Both were gone--the woman and the gold pieces; and it was characteristic of Old Scott that his first feelings of grief and rage were not for the loss of his wife, but for the coins she had taken from the powder-can. He was like a maniac--breaking everything he had ever seen his wife use; tearing to pieces with his strong, sinewy hands every article of her clothing his eyes fell upon. He raved like a madman, and cursed like a fiend. Then he found her letter. “Dear Fred:-- Now I’m a going away, and I’m a going to stay a year. The money will last us two just about that long. I asked Mr. Baird to go with me, so you needn’t blame him. I ain’t got nothing against you, only you wouldn’t never take me nowheres; and I just couldn’t stand it no longer. I’ve been a good wife, and worked hard, and earned money for you; but I ain’t never had none of it myself to spend. So I’m a going to have it now; for some of it is mine anyway. It has been work--work all the time, and you wouldn’t take me nowheres. So I’m a going now myself. I don’t like Mr. Baird better than I do you--that ain’t it--and if you want me to come back to you in a year I will. And I’ll be a good wife to you again, like I was before. Only you needn’t expect for me to say that I’ll be sorry because I done it, for I won’t be. I won’t never be sorry I done it; never, never! So, good-by. Your loving wife, Martha J. Scott.” If, through the long years, he had not been blind, he could have saved her from it. Not a vicious woman--not a wantonly sinning woman; only one who--weak and ignorant--was dazed and bewildered by the possibilities she saw in just one year of unrestricted freedom to enjoy all the pleasures that might come within her reach. To be sure, it did seem preposterous that a young and handsome man, with refined tastes and education, should go away with a woman years older than himself, and one, too, who was uncouth in manner and in speech. However strange it looked to the world, the fact remained that they eloped. But both were well away before it was suspected that they had gone together. Old Scott volunteered no information to the curious; and his grim silence forbade the questions they would have asked. It was long before the truth was known, for people were slow to credit so strange a story.