"The old woman that your brother writes about was faithful," he said at last. "Likely a dozen men or women had it before it was dropped on that table in New Orleans. What was your brother doing in Texas, Phil?" "He was older than I, and he went to Texas to help in the fighting against Mexico. You know there were raids on both sides long after San Jacinto. You remember the Mier expedition of the Texans, and there were others like it. John and his comrades were taken in one of these, but I don’t know exactly which. I have written letters to all the Texas officials, but none of them know anything." "And of course you started at once," said Bill Breakstone. "Of course. There was nothing to keep me. We were only two, and I sold what we had, came down the Kentucky into the Ohio, and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where I met you and the others. I had an idea that John had been carried westward, and that I might learn something about him at Santa Fé, or at least that Santa Fé might be a good point from which to undertake a search. It’s all guesswork anyway, that is, mostly, but when de Armijo told us that war had come I wasn’t altogether sorry, because I knew that would take us down into Mexico, where I would have a better chance to look for John. What do you think of it, Bill?" "Let me look at the letter again," said Breakstone. Phil handed it back to him, and he read and reread it, turned it over and over again, looked at the inscription, "To Philip Bedford, Paris, Kentucky," and then tried to see writing where none was. "It’s the old business of a needle in a haystack, Phil," he said. "We’re bound to confess that. We don’t know where this letter was written nor when. Your brother, as he says, had lost count of time, but he might have made a stagger at a date." "If he had put down any," said Phil, "it was rubbed out before it reached me. But I don’t think it likely that he even made a guess. Do you know, Bill, I’m afraid that maybe, being shut up in a place like that, it might, after a long time--well, touch his head just a little. To be shut up in a cell all by yourself for a year, maybe two years, or even more, is a terrible thing, they say." "Don’t think that! Don’t think it!" said Bill Breakstone hastily. "The letter doesn’t sound as if it were written by one who was getting just a little bit out of tune. Besides, I’m thinking it’s a wonderful thing that letter got to you."