THE letters which the brothers and Walsh had written at Fort Laramie, and which they had entrusted to a party of returning emigrants, were the last that reached the town of Benson. They were poured over in secret; and afterward Colonel Sharp was permitted to print in the Pioneer such descriptive passages as were deemed of general public interest.

They marked the end of what had seemed as permanent as anything can seem in this world; and all that remained in record of what three men in their varying ways had counted of supreme worth, was the yellowing paper with the many seals and the words that meant so little or so much.

One month, then two, then three, dragged by in silence; a silence which Virginia, and Jane, and Anna, bore with differing degrees of fear and uncertainty, as they waited from day to day for some sign from the gold-seekers; but no word came. The trail and the campfire with the love that watched beside them had spoken for the last time.

Each day Virginia with Jane, from the white porch of the farmhouse, anticipated the coming of the north bound stage which carried the western mails. They heard it with its squeaking brake block hard set against the wheels the moment it began the long descent of Landray's Hill; they watched it with anxious glances as it came careening into sight, tossed and troubled in the ruts of the Little River road; and their eyes, now filled with a world of hope and yearning, followed it until it was lost in the depths of the covered bridge at the foot of Main Street.

Sam West, sometimes dusty, and sometimes muddy—for they would not let him start for town until they saw the last of the coach since they found some comfort in sending him off post-haste, and in bidding him ride hard, and above all things be sure and bring back the letters—would each day present his honest red face at the little square window in the post-office, with a cheerful, “Anything to-day, Mr. Bently?” And Mr. Bendy, who knew there was nothing for him would answer, “No, I think not, Sam, but I won't be sure; just wait a minute and I'll look.” And he would search through the letters only to lay them down with a regretful shake of the head. “I am sorry, Sam, but there don't seem to be as much as the scratch of a pen,” he would say.

At first, Sam, by a variety of ingenious theories strove to explain away the repetition of this tragic fact; then theories being exhausted, he fixed his faith for a time on the inherent weakness of human nature.

“I didn't think it of Stephen Landray—I vow I didn't! Looks like out of sight out of mind, don't it? Well, I'm dummed!” However, the cynic's mood endured but briefly. “I wish she wouldn't send me,” he told the postmaster one rainy day late in September. “I'd give a good deal not to have to go back and tell her there's nothing; why don't he write; what's to hinder him, anyway?”

“I don't know what's to hinder, Sam, but something is a-hinder-ing,” said Mr. Bently.

“Mighty singular; ain't it?” and Sam meditated in silence for a moment. “Do you reckon anything's wrong with them?” he asked, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper. He could never quite rid himself of the conviction that the postmaster, with all those letters, must have a means of knowing.

“I hope not; I'd hate to think that,” said Mr. Bently.

“You don't reckon the letters could be lost?” Sam ventured hesitatingly, for to him the question somehow seemed to argue lack of faith in Mr. Bently's official ability.

“That might happen, Sam; I won't say it is at all likely; still it might happen.”

“Can I tell her that, Mr. Bently, that you said so? I got to tell her something; she just listens to any fool thing I say, and turns back into the house without a word except a 'Thank you, Sam.' She's got to stop sending me, or I'll quit the place! It don't make no difference if Stephen Landray did tell me he wanted me to stay on. He ain't acting right, not letting her know where he's at.”

“I am afraid the boys made a big mistake,” said Mr. Bently. “They was well fixed here.”

“They was indeed,” agreed Sam. “Say, would you mind looking at them letters again to make sure, Mr. Bently? No? Don't it beat all why she don't hear from him! Well, I must be getting along, she's waiting for me. You think there is some sort of a slim chance that the letters are lost? It will be a comfort for them to think that. Indians, maybe?”

“No, I wouldn't say a word about Indians, Sam,” objected Mr. Bently hastily.

“Well, then, they are just lost, you reckon.”

“That may be, Sam, I don't say it's so, but the western mails are very oncertain. They probably had to give their letters to some party that was coming East, and they may have lost them.”

“Then I'd like to put my hands on the cuss that done it! I'd make him jump clean out of his skin to get shut of me.”

The honest fellow galloped back to the farm through the mud, and in the face of a cold rain that drenched him to the skin. It was early candle-light when he entered the lane, and he walked his horse up the strip of soggy turf while he meditated on what he should tell Mrs. Landray. The storm had driven her from the porch, but as he turned the corner of the house on his way to the barn he saw her face at the library window, and merely shook his head.

When he had stabled and fed his horse he hurried into the kitchen. Martha, his wife, met him with a look of inquiry on her broad, good-natured face.

“No letters?” she asked, and he answered her with her own words, “No letters.”

“There's a drink of brandy for you, Sam,” she said. “Mrs. Landray wanted you should have it.”

Sam stalked to the table and emptied the glass at a swallow.

“Best French spirits! The Landrays always was gentlemen when it came to their drinks.”

“We are expecting things, we are,” said his wife. “You're to be ready to go into town after supper for the doctor, if he's wanted.”

In the dining-room with its dark walnut wainscoating, doubly sombre in the half light of the flickering candles that burnt on the mantel, Virginia watched and waited alone. No sound came from the room above; silence filled the house with a hush that was like expectation. But a moment before she had heard Martha moving to and fro; a chair had been pushed across the floor; and she had heard the sound of voices. She had listened intently but the words they spoke had been indistinguishable; perhaps Jane was resting more quietly now.

An hour had elapsed since Sam had rattled out of the yard in the covered cart, the beat of his horse's hoofs on the spongy earth soon dying away in the distance. He had been dispatched in urgent haste into town to bring Dr. Harrison.

Meanwhile Martha had the care of the sick woman; for Virginia had no heart to go near her. If she should be needed, or if Jane asked for her, then she would go; but not unless. The situation with its hope and uncertainty baffled her usually ready courage; she could only think of that boyish husband, for so Jane described him, and his absence and silence. Why had he gone—he of all men? What fitness had he, with his impractical Latin and Greek, for the hard actualities of the plains?

From her seat before the fire, she heard the sullen insistent rush of the wind outside; and at intervals the dull surging echoes the wooded heights of Landray's Hill gave to the storm. They had roared among those oaks for perhaps a thousand years, as now, when the grey clouds and slanted mists of the equinox were tossed and twisted in the face of the night. She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand; she heard the fall of the rain in a lull of the storm; and again rising out of the silence, the wind, as it roared on the hill and sweeping nearer beat against the shuttered windows high up in the gable of the old stone mill: then it dribbled and died away on the brown meadow land of the Little River bottom.

Jane was quite happy; how happy, Virginia had only her woman's instinct to tell her; she had talked incessantly all day of the future when her husband should have returned. But what if he did not return, what was in store for her then? This doubt now took possession of Virginia's fancy, for her own hope had crumbled; perhaps it was only the night, the loneliness; perhaps later when all was over, her courage would come back; and then there was the morrow, it might bring the looked-for letters; it surely would, she had waited patiently; but now—now she could endure no longer.

Presently disturbing her revery the brass knocker on the front door sounded discordantly. She rose hurriedly, and picking up a candle hastened out into the hall to admit Dr. Harrison; but she admitted more than the doctor; for there in the portly physician's shadow, bowing and smiling, not quite diffident and not quite confident, stood young Jacob Benson.

The doctor was saying as Virginia opened the door, “So it was you, Jacob; we heard your horse floundering through the mud after us all the way out from town and wondered who it was.”

“Yes, it was I, doctor,” but Benson looked past him to Virginia, who stood in the doorway shading the light she held with one hand. There was a brief silence; the doctor seemed to smile behind the turned-up collar of his great coat. The lawyer spoke first.

“I trust you are not ill, Mrs. Landray?” he said.

“I? Oh, no, Mr. Benson—pray come in.”

The doctor grinned at Virginia, who gave him a slightly embarrassed glance; and Benson noting it, felt somehow that he was in the way; yet he followed the physician into the hall and closed the door. In the library, Dr. Harrison promptly divested himself of his outer coat and fell to warming his hands before the fire. Benson stood at a little distance fingering the rim of his hat, and wondering who was ill since it was not Virginia.

“You must have had a very disagreeable ride, doctor,” Virginia was saying.

“I'll leave Jacob to speak of that; he couldn't have enjoyed it any more than I did.” He smiled again; then picking up his case of medicines he quitted the room.

“Won't you come nearer the fire, Mr. Benson?” said Virginia; her words were civil enough, but there was the old hostility in her manner, which Benson had never been able to explain.

“I rather fear I've chosen a poor time for my call,” he observed.

“If it is to see Mrs. Walsh—”

“It is to see Mrs. Walsh,” he replied.

“She is not well.”

“I'm very sorry. It's nothing serious, I hope?” he said.

He drew forward a chair, and seated himself with no little composure before the fire.

“I am not detaining you?” he said suddenly, half rising.

“No, I think not; Martha is with her.”

He wondered vaguely at her reticence regarding Jane.

“There's a good deal of sickness,” he said, as one presenting a valuable fact for her consideration.

“So I hear.”

“I fear her affairs are in a rather bad way,” he continued, suddenly recalled to the ostensible purpose of his visit.

“You have heard from her husband's brother then?” said Virginia quickly.

“Not from him personally, but from a lawyer in New York for whom I occasionally transact business here.”

“Oh!” and Virginia waited for him to go on.

“I gather that this brother of Walsh's is entirely irresponsible. In the first place his business did not fail; he disposed of it at a remunerative figure.”

“And the money which was left for Jane is lost?” asked Virginia.

“That seems to be the case. In fact Walsh has himself sailed for California.”

They were silent. Benson had said all there was to say, yet he made no move to go. That he had not seen Mrs. Walsh did not matter since the real purpose of his drive to the farm had been accomplished. He had seen Virginia; he had lacked the strength to deny himself this perilous joy. Away from her he forgot rebuffs and slights; he remembered only her beauty, the depths of her eyes; the poise of her head; some swift graceful gesture; and he lived in the spell of these things; and the desire, strong and not to be denied, to see her, would assert itself. To be near her was to feel himself ennobled, to thrill with a curious sense of purification; but he was conscious that his feeling for her, which had grown out of a boyish admiration for a woman's beauty that seemed finer and nobler than anything he had known in a woman before, was sweeping him away by imperceptible gradations from all his ideals of conduct and manhood; yet he would have been loath to call this secret ecstasy he knew in her presence, love. In his moments of self-searching he told himself that her indifference more than punished him for the pleasure he derived from being near her; but he expected to suffer; that was something he could not hope to escape.

Virginia moved impatiently.

“I will tell Jane all you have told me, when I think she is able to bear it. It will be a terrible disappointment to her.” Then she shot him a swift glance. “You have not heard from Stephen?” she spoke unsteadily, and to Benson it seemed reluctantly as well.

“Not since he left Fort Laramie. I suppose we can hardly realize the difficulties he encounters in sending his letters East for mailing, here we have every modern convenience; the stage each day—”

Her grave eyes were bent upon his face; she was seeking to determine the depth of his conviction.

“What would you do if it was one you loved who was so strangely silent, who had gone, and from whom you could not hear?” she asked.

He met her glance helplessly.

“Perhaps the letters are lost,” he said at last.

“That's what every one tells me,” she smiled wearily.

“It is not an unreasonable conjecture,” he urged.

“Nothing is unreasonable; but nothing will satisfy me until I hear from him.”

“No, of course not.”

“It was three months ago—three months ago—that I heard last!”

“But consider the difficulties, the distance; I wouldn't give way to—” he did not finish the sentence, for Virginia had risen, and moving swiftly to the window stood with her back to him, looking out into the night.

“Can't you explain his silence? I am dying for some word of comfort—why don't you speak and tell me he is safe!”

“Most assuredly I think he is safe, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson, who had also risen.

“What do you understand by their silence then? I've wanted to ask you,” she turned toward him as she spoke.

Benson fell back a step, and under her steady gaze his face lost colour.

“Why, I—I hope for the best,” he said at last.

“Then you do think this silence means something more than the mere loss of letters—you—” she choked and could not go on, and her hands went up to her white round throat.

“No, no!” he cried hastily. “God forbid that we should think anything but the best for them; we can hardly understand their situation, a thousand things might stand in the way of your hearing.”

Her hands fell at her side.

“You are a man; you should know more of these matters than we women; what are the dangers that they may meet?”

“I don't know. Really, Mrs. Landray, you exaggerate the gravity of their silence. You mustn't give way to your fears,” he said with gentle insistance.

“My pride, my courage, has kept me up till now, in Jane's presence and in Anna's; perhaps because they were weak too, weak and helpless as only women can be; but you are a man, and it makes no difference to you!”

“Pardon me, it makes every difference to me; if you mean by that, this fear you have that some harm has come to them. I regard your husband as my best friend,” his voice shook with real feeling. “He is one of the few men to whom I am sincerely attached. Of course, I grant it is impossible that I should feel this silence as deeply as you feel it—”

“Yet you urged him to go!”

“I—Mrs. Landray? Surely you cannot think that!”

“You told me so.”

Benson flushed hotly at her words. “Oh,” he said coldly and resentfully. “This accounts for a good deal I was at a loss to explain.”

“You mean—”

“Your quite evident dislike for me.”

“Well, was not that enough to make me hate you?” she cried fiercely. She was very beautiful in her wrath, as she stood before him drawn up to her fullest height, her head thrown back, and the quick colour coming and going on her face.

“It is very unworthy of you,” he said indignantly. “To hold this against me when I had nothing at all to do with his venture.”

“But you told me in the lane that day that he must go—”

“Pardon me, I told you he could not honourably withdraw.” It was plain that he was shaken by her words and manner. “I warned him in the first instance that he must be careful or he would become committed; I warned him repeatedly. Frankly, I thought the venture singularly ill-advised and rash. I told him so.”

“He owed a higher duty to me than to any one else! What does money count for beside my love? I have endured everything that a woman can endure, since he left; I have been a prey to every imaginable fear—”

“I am very unfortunate in that I have earned your dislike. I shall never cease to regret that,” he said at last, furious with himself that he should have harboured a moment's resentment against her, unjust as he felt her to be in her attitude toward him.

While he was speaking he had slipped his hand into an inner pocket of his coat where his fingers closed over a letter. He debated whether or not he should show it to Virginia.

“What is there to think, Mrs. Landray, but that he is safe and well wherever he is?” he said, after the lapse of a moment.

“Oh, I don't know, but why are there no letters? If we could only hear from them!”

“The letters will come if you will only have patience,” he said.

“Patience!” and she made him a scornful gesture.

Benson drew the letter from his pocket. “Of course it was quite unnecessary, and I can only explain it on the score of my sincere regard for Stephen—” he hesitated.

“A letter! It is from Stephen!” she cried.

“No, I only wish it were; but it is from the commandant at Fort Laramie. I wrote him last month. I thought since we were not hearing from them—my dear Mrs. Landray, you need not be alarmed,” for Virginia had grown white, and had uttered a startled exclamation. “This is the reply to my letter, I received it to-day.”

“May I read it?” she asked breathlessly.

“To be sure;” and he handed her the letter.

“Oh, thank you—but why did you not tell me before?” she added reproachfully. She did not wait for him to answer, she was already devouring the letter with eager eyes.

“You see he says he remembers the party perfectly, and he speaks of them as in excellent health. That's very encouraging, is it not?” He had feared she might ask him why he had written to Fort Laramie. His motive he would have found difficult to explain even to himself.

She finished reading the letter. “May I keep it?” she asked.

“Certainly, Mrs. Landray.”

“Oh, Mr. Benson, thank you so much for what you have done!” and she held out her hand.

He had passed into her confidence; and his heart throbbed with a sudden intoxication that was new and strange. But he still feared the questions she might ask, and turned reluctantly to the door.

“I thought the letter very encouraging,” he murmured.

“Must you go?”

“Yes, it is quite late.”

She followed him into the hall, eager now to make amends for all her former unkindness.

“You have made me very happy, Mr. Benson, and it was so kind of you to come out through all this rain. I don't know how you thought to write! It seems a very natural thing to have done. It's not like hearing from him, but it is such a comfort to know that he was well!”

“You will hear from Stephen when he reaches Salt Lake City,” he assured her confidently. “Good-night, Mrs. Landray.”

He threw open the door and a sudden gust of mingled rain and wind assailed him. Apparently Virginia did not hear another door that was opened and closed somewhere in the silent house, but Benson did; and he was quite sure he caught the weak fretful cry of a new-born child. A look of sudden intelligence crossed his face; he blushed furiously as he hurried away.

“I should have known! Well, I guess I've plenty to learn, and especially about women!” he murmured.