That was all, except his name, “David Whitcomb,” at the foot of the page. The postmark had resisted the spoiling of both rain and mould, and read distinctly, as Al Hewett had declared, “Tombstone, Arizona,” in a blurred circle, with the date “April 2” and the hour of stamping “2-P.M.” With a sudden glad impulse Barbara pulled a sheet of paper toward her. “Dear David [she wrote], Your letter has just reached me, but I can only read a part of it, because——” She paused and hesitated; then went on firmly: “Jimmy lost it, and it lay out under a bush in the rain for more than a week. I can make out only a few words here and there, but those few tell me that you have not forgotten, and that you want me to write to you.” The girl paused to draw a deep, wondering breath. “I can’t tell you how strange it seems to be writing to you, because I have been thinking of you, David, for nearly three years as dead. They said you were lost on a trail in Alaska. And I thought it must be true. But your letter—even though I can’t read it—has brought me the assurance that you are not in some far-away heaven, where I have tried to picture you, David, but on earth. “This letter may never reach you, for I can only be sure that your letter to me was mailed in Tombstone; but I want to tell you that only Jimmy and I are left. Father died a year ago, and since then I have been trying to hold the farm for Jimmy. We are the last of the Prestons, you know, and I do want——” She stopped short, laid down her pen and listened breathlessly. She fancied she had heard the child’s voice calling her from the room above. She glided noiselessly to the foot of the stair, and listened, her slight figure seeming to melt, spirit-like, into the shadows. It was very lonely in the old house. The tall clock on the stair-landing ticked loud and solemnly in the stillness, and the wind in the budding trees without swept past the house with a long sighing breath. The girl shivered as she listened, then she went quickly back to the sitting-room with its cheerful circle of light and its drawn curtains, and paused to read the words she had written to David Whitcomb. They sounded stiff and trite after her brief absence in the shadowy hall. After all, was she not taking too much for granted? Perhaps he was merely asking for information, which he felt sure he could obtain from her on the score of old friendship. He had left some books in the bare little room he had occupied in the village for a year. The minister had them, she had been told. Her cheeks crimsoned slowly as she crumpled the half-written page and tossed it into the waste basket.