“He wrote her, telling her the sort of man he thought I was, and told her to break our engagement immediately.
“She is a type of girl who believes absolutely in her father. Thinks he can do no wrong, that he’s never mistaken. She is loyal and devoted to him. He insisted on my reading his letter, doubtless to convince me that Alice was lost to me, irrevocably. And she would have been. She would never have listened to me.” Morely paused a moment.
“I knew the letter went out on that mail. I determined to get it. And I did.”
Involuntarily McKenzie nodded. Did a memory of his own hot-blooded youth return to him? Youth that will dare much for the loved one?
“I intended returning immediately to the Post. My short absence would not have been noticed, for I often go in the woods where sickness has been reported. Within a week or so, I intended going to Quebec, and urge Alice to marry me there. I think she would have—for we love each other. Then we would have returned to the Post. For my work is here, in the North, that I love.”
Morely fell silent.
“Seems to me it was an act of—er—Providence that Alice McAndrews never received that letter. Her father and mother dead, the poor girl needs the man she loves,” Hardy ventured. He kept a wary eye on the inspector as he spoke.
McKenzie stared at his sergeant fixedly, then picked up McAndrews’s letter. He read it thoughtfully, his heavy brows drawn together, his face grave.
Morely’s hopes died. There was no softness, no sympathy in that rock-like face.
To be locked in prison, while the pest still raged! When he was so badly needed! And Alice, alone in her bereavement—he groaned aloud.