For a long time they rode side by side on the jumper without a word. Mr. Ide decided that his reticent companion was pondering a plan for the approaching interview, and was careful not to interrupt the train of thought. He was infinitely disappointed and not a little vexed when Wade turned to him at last and inquired, with plain effort to make his voice calm, whether John Barrett had recovered sufficiently to go home.
"He? He went two weeks ago--he and his girl," snapped the little man, impatiently.
After a moment he began to dig at the buttons of his fur coat, and dipped his hand into his breast-pocket. He brought out a letter.
"Here's a line Barrett's girl left to be sent in to you the first chance." He met the young man's reproachful gaze boldly. "When a man's got real business to attend to," he snorted, "he ain't to blame if he disremembers tugaluggin' a love-letter." He gave the missive into Wade's hands, and went on, discontentedly: "What kind of a crazy-headed performance was it those girls was up to when they came up into these woods? I've had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, and probably I couldn't, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. She has her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her," he grumbled.
"I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide's movements, even with her father. Miss Barrett's affairs are wholly her own. May I read my letter?"
"May you read it?" blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of this conventional request. "What in tophet do you think I've got to do with your readin' your own letters?" And he subsided into offended silence, seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with events as they were disposing themselves.
Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in his bare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand had rested.
"MY DEAR DWIGHT,--We are going home. The darkness has not lifted from us. For my light and my comfort I look into the north, where I know your love is shining. My sister was sitting by my father's side when I returned, and he was awake from his long dream and knew her, but he had not spoken the truth to her, and if she knows she has not told. And the cloud of it all is over us, and I cannot speak to him or open my heart to him. He did not even ask where I had been. It is as though he feared one word would dislodge the avalanche under which he shrinks. And I have to write this of my father! So we are going home. Love me. I need all your love. Take all of mine in return."