At length he reached out and touched the writing with a caressing finger.
"Kitty--Kitty, how great you are!" he said.

Then as he turned to the outer door a softness came into his face, stole up into his brilliant eyes and dimmed them with a tear.

"What a hand to hold in the dark--the dark of life!" he said aloud.

"Courage, soldier!" he added, as he opened the door by which he had entered, through which Burlingame had gone, and strode away towards the town of Askatoon, feeling somehow in his heart that before midnight his luck would turn.
From the dining-room Kitty had watched him go.

"Courage, soldier!" she whispered after him, and she laughed; but almost immediately she threw her head up with a gasping sigh, and when it was lowered again two tears were stealing down her cheeks.
With an effort she conquered herself, wiped away the tears, and said aloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach, "Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a fool you are!" Entering the room Crozier had left, she went to the desk with the green-baize top, opened it, and took out the fateful letter which Mona Crozier had written to her husband five years ago.