For a moment the woman looked into his face, now lit with such a cruel grin. Something in her heart gave her pause. Somehow she felt that what she was called upon to do was intended to hurt Zip in some subtle way, and the thought was not pleasant. She didn't want to hurt Zip. She tried in those few seconds to probe this man's purpose. But her mind was not equal to the task. Surely a letter appealing to Zip could not really hurt him. And she wanted little Vada so much. It was this last thought that decided her. No, nothing should stand in her way. She steeled her heart against her better feelings, but with some misgivings, and sat down to write. James watched her. She procured paper and pen, and he watched her bending over the table. No detail of her face and figure escaped his greedy eyes. She was very beautiful, so beautiful to him that he stirred restlessly, chafing irritably under the restraint he was putting upon himself. Again and again he asked himself why he was fool enough to do as he was doing. She was his. There was no one to stop him, no one but--her. Ah! There was the trouble. Such was the man's temper that nothing could satisfy him that gave him no difficulty of attaining. His was the appetite of an epicure in all things. Everything in its way must be of the best, and to be of the best to him it must be the most difficult of achievement. He waited with what patience he could until the letter was written. Then he watched Jessie seal and address it. Then she rose and stood staring down at the cruel missive. She knew it was cruel now, for, trading on the knowledge of the man who was to receive it, she had appealed through the channel of her woman's weakness to all that great spirit which she knew to abide in her little husband's heart. James understood something of what was passing in her mind. And it pleased him to think of what he had forced her to do--pleased him as cruelty ever pleases the truly vicious. At last she held the missive out to him. "There it is," she said. And as his hand closed upon it her own was drawn sharply away, as though to avoid contact with his. "Good," he said, with a peculiar grin. For a moment the silence remained unbroken. Then the woman raised appealing eyes to his face. "You won't hurt Zip?" she said in a voice that would surely have heartened the object of her solicitude had he heard it. The man shook his head. His jaws were set, and his smile was unpleasing. "Guess any hurtin' Zip gets'll be done by you." "Ah, no, no!" The woman reached out wildly for the letter, but James had passed swiftly out of the room. CHAPTER XIII BIRDIE AND THE BOYS