"My dear Jean:" she read. "How can I ever forgive myself for neglecting you so long? I can only say that though I have failed to make good my promise to write, you have never been forgotten by me. Jean, I am sorry you didn't come here with me. I found gold, more than I can spend in a lifetime, and I have made you a stockholder in my mine. I am coming back to the States next spring and will look you up first of all. I am sending this to the old address, trusting that if you are not there it will be forwarded to you. I used to think it would be glorious to be rich, but now that I am alone in the world, money seems a poor substitute for my lost happiness.
"Let me hear from you soon, Jean, and address your letter, Post Office Box 462, Nome, Alaska. I hope you are well and happy. You always were a sunshiny old chap. Here's hoping.
"Your old friend,
"Denton."
"Is it not a very gran' letter?" asked old Jean with anxious pride. "My frien' Denton have study in college, too."
"Indeed it is, Jean," agreed Anne warmly.
"Your friend seems to be the right sort of comrade, even if he is a bad correspondent," remarked David Nesbit.
"Something like me," murmured Hippy gently.
No one appeared to notice this modest assertion.
"Sounds like a page from a best seller, doesn't it, Grace?" asked Tom laughingly.
Grace did not answer. She was gazing at the signature of the letter with perplexed eyes. She was wondering why the name Denton seemed so familiar. Remembrance came suddenly—Ruth, of course. With that recollection came a sudden startling train of thought. Ruth's father had gone west, had been heard from in Nevada, then disappeared. Jean's friend had lost his wife and child on a westbound train. Here, however, Grace's supposition proved weak. Both wife and child had been burned to death in the railroad wreck. Still, mistakes in identification were frequently made on such painful occasions. Grace went back to her first supposition. "It is the only shred of a clew that I have run across yet," she reflected. "I am going to hang to it and see where it leads. And to think that perhaps old Jean once knew Ruth's father. It's unbelievable."