“‘Poor little wee lassie! Not yet three and no one to care for you. I shall try to get back to New York before the end comes, but there is no one, not even in France, where I lived as a boy. All—all are dead.
“‘But you will want to know much and I will be gone when you are old enough to question. When I was twenty-one I came to New York and married a girl who was as all alone as I. We were very happy, but my loved one, your mother, died when you were born. For a long year I grieved until my health was broken. For your sake, Lalie, I followed my doctor’s advice and came to the Rocky Mountains. I was about to put you in a convent school, but you clung to me and would not loosen your hold. I feared I had not long to live and I did so want you with me, hence I brought you here. But if I do not get stronger soon, I will take you back to the kind sisters, who will make you a home.
“‘We reached this deserted mining camp after weeks of wandering and I built for us a cabin where we could be alone and unmolested. At last my lost ambition had returned. I wrote the book of my dreams and sent it to my publisher in New York. I hope, dear little daughter, that it will be a success for your sake, but as yet I do not know.’”
Meg looked up and her dusky eyes were filled with tears. “That is all on the first sheet,” she said. “The next was written at a later date.” Then again she read:
“‘A tribe of Ute Indians has taken possession of the deserted cabins in the camp, but, as there is little game hereabouts, I doubt if they will long remain.’
“Two weeks later: ‘I have not been as well as I had hoped to be. I did very wrong to spend so many hours writing my dream book, but now that it is completed I will write no more until I am stronger. Every day with a pick and shovel I dig in different places for recreation and exercise, endeavoring to find the fabled gold mine, the vein of which was lost, or so I have been told by an occasional miner who has passed this way. Before starting out I take you each afternoon to the cabin of a most kindly squaw who understands some English and since I pay her well, she is willing to care for you during my absence.’”
For a long moment Meg ceased reading and Dan, noting that her hands trembled, went to her side, saying with tender solicitude: “Dear girl, what is it? I fear that reading aloud this letter from your father is very hard for you. Wouldn’t you rather read it to yourself?” The girl lifted tear-filled eyes. “It isn’t that, Dan,” she said. “I want to share it with my friends who are so loving and loyal, but I cannot decipher the rest.”
There was a faded blur on the paper as though the pen had fallen. Then it had evidently been picked up again, but the scrawled letters that followed were very hard to read. Slowly the girl deciphered: “Lalie, when you are eighteen, get box ——” Then there was another blot and the pen had evidently rolled across the paper.
The girl held the letter up to Dan. “I fear we will never know where the box is,” she said, “for that is all.”
But the lad, after scrutinizing the sheet, held it up to the light.