The day Katherine and Miles went to the encampment it was gloriously fine, and for the first time that year the sun had real warmth in it. This had induced some of the miserable creatures to crawl out to the daylight, who perhaps had not been outside the holes for weeks. There was quite a crowd of children visible, and Katherine, whose heart always warmed to the pitiable little objects, with their mournful black eyes, produced a packet of sweets, which speedily brought a swarm of youngsters round her.
Doling the sweets out with strict impartiality, she noticed that one child had a fragment of paper in its skinny hand. This was puzzling, for the Indians were not given to education or culture in any shape or form, and the paper looked like a fragment from a letter, for she could plainly see writing upon it.
With a sign to Miles to keep the elders busy, Katherine proceeded to bribe the child to give up his dirty fragment of paper in exchange for the bag, which still had some sweets in it.
When this was done, she told Miles to cut the business short, and then they started for home. She had thrust the fragment of paper in her glove, and did not venture to look at it until they were miles away from the lake, because she did not wish the Indians to know that her curiosity had been aroused. But when the dogs had dropped into a walk, and were coming slowly up the hill at some distance behind, she pulled off her glove and proceeded to examine the dirty fragment.
It was part of a letter, and directly she saw it she recognized the handwriting as that of Mrs. Ferrars, the mother of Jervis. He had shown her some of his mother's letters, and there was no mistaking the regular, delicate handwriting. The paper was only written on on one side, and only two lines of the writing were legible:
"—is very ill; you may be sent for now at any time."
Katherine pondered over the dirty fragment with a very puzzled expression. There were three ways of explaining the presence of that bit of paper at the encampment on Ochre Lake: it might have been stolen from Jervis by the Indians, when they came down to the Cove; or the Indians coming up from Maxohama might have been robbed of the mails they were bringing by other Indians; or they might have perished in one of the winter storms, and the bags might have been found afterwards, and appropriated as justifiable treasure trove.
Katherine said nothing of all this to Miles; she wanted to speak to Jervis about it first, for, of course, it might be only part of an old letter that he had lost, and of no importance at all to anyone else. If this were proved to be the case she would be greatly relieved. A whole host of misgivings had arisen in her heart on reading the words: "You may be sent for now at any time". If Jervis were to go away, what a blank it would make in her life! Of course he would come back again, but the dreary months of his absence would be very hard to live through.
She did not see Jervis that day until evening. He came in as usual when night school was over. Then all the family were gathered in the one sitting-room the house contained, which left little chance for private conversation of any kind; the boys went away to bed after a time, taking their father with them, and then Mrs. Burton went to put her little girls to bed, and the lovers were alone for the brief half-hour which was all the time they could get for uninterrupted talk on most days. Then Katherine produced the fragment, stated how she had discovered it, and asked a little shyly if it were part of an old letter, or a bit of one he had never received.
"I have never had it, of that I am quite certain," he said, with a very grave look on his face.