Once inside the office I ran the letters through my fingers. There were two letters addressed to Miss Janet Jones, Spokane, Washington, and the writing was that with which I had grown familiar in Janet Jones’ letters to me.
I was completely mystified. I rode home in a brown study. And then suddenly I reached a solution. That night I wrote a letter. I took great pains with its construction. And after Joey was in bed I paddled away down the river in the light of the moon to the hollow stump among the willows on the bank. I placed my letter to Haidee within the recess on a soft bed of ferns and dried grass that I found there; and then I paddled stealthily home.
I kept an even face when I greeted Haidee the following day, and she did not betray by word or glance that she had received a communication from me. But as I opened my lunch pail that night to give Joey some doughnuts that Wanza had sent him, there on top was a small white envelope addressed to me.
I read the letter after Joey was in bed and I had built up a fire of pine cones on the hearth. It was a characteristic Janet Jones letter:
Dear Mr. Craftsman:
Once upon a time—which is the way I begin my fairy tales to Joey—there was a certain foolish woman, whom we will call Haidee, who lived all alone in the heart of a forest. She was a very headstrong young woman, full of whims and insane impulses, or she never would have gone into the forest to live alone. But she loved Nature passionately and she had suffered and known heartache—and she felt that Nurse Nature could assuage pain.
A big-hearted woodsman lived nearby in this same forest. He swung his ax, and befriended her. He labored in the hot sun felling trees that the headstrong woman might be safe in her flimsy shack. But the woman taunted him, and when he would have felled every tree that endangered her habitation she stayed his hand. Then, one day, retribution overtook her. A tree fell, and she was hewn down in her conceit and foolhardiness. She was taken to the woodsman’s cabin by the kind-hearted woodsman who rescued her. There she was cared for tenderly, and the coals of fire burned her poor silly head—so much so that, knowing she was a burden and an expense to the woodsman, who, like most big-hearted honest woodsmen, was desperately poor, she lay awake nights planning how best to recompense him without wounding his proud spirit. At last, she thought of a plan. And with the connivance of a dear old-time friend in Spokane, carried it out. Her friend gave her permission to sign her name to the letters she wrote the woodsman. After the letters were written, they were sent to the original Janet Jones, who forthwith mailed them to the woodsman at Roselake. Janet Jones also, naturally, received the letters which the woodsman wrote, and in due time they were put into envelopes and addressed to the headstrong woman, whom they did not fail to reach. The cedar chest was the headstrong woman’s gift to Janet Jones, who is an invalid, and a romanticist who enjoys beyond all words any departure from the commonplace.
Am I forgiven, Mr. Fixing Man? And now, one word more. You will not receive another letter from Janet Jones. And—I pray you, come not too often to Hidden Lake—it is better so.
This was the missive which I read in the firelight. As I finished I suddenly felt bereft. And I lay back in my chair and stared into the coals with unseeing eyes, brooding miserably, groping in a misty sea of doubt and unrest and feeble desire. Then Joey called me in his sleep. Just as I was sinking utterly, I heard, “Mr. David, Mr. David,” and the cry of appeal braced me, strengthened the man in me. I went in to him as a sinner into a sanctuary, and the kiss he gave me sleepily was a salve that solaced and sustained me throughout the trying night.
I had finished the improvements on Haidee’s cabin at this time; so I gave over going to Hidden Lake in prompt obedience to the request my wonder woman had made in her letter. But I wrote an answer to the letter and placed it in the old stump. I assured her that I would respect her wishes, and I begged her to let me know the instant I could serve her in any way, promising her that never a day should pass without my going to the secret post-office.