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“Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?”

“Yes, of course, and glad to do so. You are the only man who can arrange the affair, if it is to be done at all. But I tell you, as you know, that everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the men…. So you had better keep the letter for to-night. It may help you to get the men together. A woman’s handwriting will do more than a man’s word any time.”

Jaspar Hume’s eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were studying something else. His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a few minutes before.

“I will see you at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field,” he said quietly. “Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?”

“Certainly. Good-night.”

Jaspar Hume let himself out. He walked across a small square to a log house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost. A dog sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his breast. He touched the head as if it had been that of a child, and said: “Lie down, Bouche.”

It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix it clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern and set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to the end without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: “So this is how the lines meet again, Varre Lepage!” He read the last sentence of the letter aloud:

In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband, I am, with all respect,

Faithfully yours,

ROSE LEPAGE.

Again he repeated: “With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage.”

The dog Bouche looked up. Perhaps it detected something unusual in the voice. It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master’s knee. Hume’s hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: “Ah, Rose Lepage, you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your husband if you knew. You might say to him then, ‘With all love,’ but not ‘With all respect.'”

He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took the dog’s head between his hands and said: “Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a story.” The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm.

“Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at the same college were struggling together in their profession as civil engineers. One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume. The one was brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious. Lepage could have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for one.

“Only for one, Bouche, you understand. He lived in it, he loved it, he saw great things to be achieved in it. He had got an idea. He worked at it night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it, he was ready to give it to the world. But he was seized with illness, became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his idea, his invention, behind him–his complete idea. While he was gone his bosom friend stole his perfected idea–yes, stole it, and sold it for twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor. And then he married her. You don’t know her, Bouche. You never saw beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn’t Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he had to think of her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche. Even a dog can see that.”