They
were as legible as print. And as he passed from the first to the
second, and from the second to the third, and then read on into the
others, he forgot there was such a thing as time and that Mary
Josephine was waiting for him. The clippings had told him one thing;
here, like bits of driftage to be put together, a line in this place
and half a dozen in that, in paragraphs that enlightened and in others
that puzzled, was the other side of the story, a growing thing that
rose up out of mystery and doubt in segments and fractions of segments
adding themselves together piecemeal, welding the whole into form and
substance, until there rode through Keith's veins a wild thrill of
exultation and triumph.
And then he came to the ninth and last letter. It was in a different
handwriting, brief, with a deadly specificness about it that gripped
Keith as he read.
This ninth letter he held in his hand as he rose from the table, and
out of his mouth there fell, unconsciously, Conniston's own words,
"It's devilish queer, old top--and funny!"
There was no humor in the way he spoke them. His voice was hard, his
eyes dully ablaze. He was looking back into that swirling, unutterable
loneliness of the northland, and he was seeing Conniston again.
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