"I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too,—about Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the way I expected she would be."
"What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently acclimated to bloom out of season.
"Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?"
"Sure."
"How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day."
"Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him back to Denver some way or other."
"Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian at first, he will doubtless need one now."
Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone.
"Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once, and he was afraid he might do it again."
"Will he?" asked the wife.