“It’s no joke,” Philip returned soberly. “I found a note from her in my mail at the railroad office. It is nearly a year old. Her father died a few days after we left Denver last spring.”
Bromley became instantly sympathetic. “And you don’t know what has become of her?”
“No; I can’t find a trace.”
“She was left alone after her father’s death?”
“Oh, no; there is a family—a mother and two younger girls.”
“Migrants, like all the rest of us, I suppose?”
“Yes; from Mississippi. They came out for the father’s health—and came too late. He was an ex-rebel soldier.”
“Perhaps they have gone back to the South.”
Philip shook his head. “I hardly think so; I doubt if they had the means. The war had left them poor.”
“Tell me more,” Bromley urged.