"And of course you started at once," said Bill Breakstone.
"Of course. There was nothing to keep me. We were only two, and I sold what we had, came down the Kentucky into the Ohio, and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where I met you and the others. I had an idea that John had been carried westward, and that I might learn something about him at Santa Fé, or at least that Santa Fé might be a good point from which to undertake a search. It's all guesswork anyway, that is, mostly, but when de Armijo told us that war had come I wasn't altogether sorry, because I knew that would take us down into Mexico, where I would have a better chance to look for John. What do you think of it, Bill?"
"Let me look at the letter again," said Breakstone.
Phil handed it back to him, and he read and reread it, turned it over and over again, looked at the inscription, "To Philip Bedford, Paris, Kentucky," and then tried to see writing where none was.
"It's the old business of a needle in a haystack, Phil," he said. "We're bound to confess that. We don't know where this letter was written nor when. Your brother, as he says, had lost count of time, but he might have made a stagger at a date."
"If he had put down any," said Phil, "it was rubbed out before it reached me. But I don't think it likely that he even made a guess. Do you know, Bill, I'm afraid that maybe, being shut up in a place like that, it might, after a long time--well, touch his head just a little. To be shut up in a cell all by yourself for a year, maybe two years, or even more, is a terrible thing, they say."
"Don't think that! Don't think it!" said Bill Breakstone hastily. "The letter doesn't sound as if it were written by one who was getting just a little bit out of tune. Besides, I'm thinking it's a wonderful thing that letter got to you."
"I've thought of that often, myself," exclaimed Phil, a sudden light shining in his eyes. "This is a message, a call for help. It comes out of nowhere, so to speak, out of a hidden stone castle or prison, and in some way it reaches me, for whom it was intended. It seems to me that the chances were a million to one against its coming, but it came. It came! That's the wonderful, the unforgettable thing! It's an omen, Bill, an omen and a sign. If this little paper with the few words on it came to me through stone walls and over thousands of miles, well, I can go back with it to the one who sent it!"
His face was transfigured, and for the time absolute confidence shone in his eyes. Bill Breakstone, a man of sympathetic heart, caught the enthusiasm.
"We'll find him, Phil! We'll find him," he exclaimed.