He snatched like a starving man for food at the letters MacVeigh pulled from his pocket. While he read Billy sat down with Little Mystery on his knees. She laughed and put her warm little hands up to his rough face. Her eyes were blue, like Isobel’s; and suddenly he crushed his face close down against her soft curls and held her so close to him that for a moment she was frightened. A little later Pelliter looked up. His eyes shone, his thin face was radiant with joy.
“God bless the sweetest little girl in the world, Billy!” he whispered, huskily. “She says she’s lonely for me. She tells me to hurry— hurry down there to her. She says that if I don’t come soon she’ll come up to me! Read ’em, Billy!”
He looked in astonishment at the change which he saw in MacVeigh’s face. Billy accepted the letters mechanically and placed them on the edge of the bunk near which he was sitting.
“I’ll read them— after a while,” he said, slowly.
Little Mystery clambered from his knee and ran to Pelliter. Billy was staring straight into the other’s face.
“You’re sure you’ve told me everything, Pelly? There wasn’t anything in his pockets? You searched well?”
“Yes. There was nothing.”
“But— you were sick—”
“That’s why I buried him shallow,” interrupted Pelliter. “He’s close to the last cross, just under the ice and snow. I wanted you to look— for yourself.”
Billy rose to his feet. He took Little Mystery in his arms again and looked closely in her face. There was a strange look in his eyes. She laughed at him, but he did not seem to notice it. And then he held her out to Pelliter.