.

Philip Takes Up The Trail.
The letter--the flowers--that one shining golden hair, wound in a glistening thread about their shriveled stems, seemed for a short space to lift Philip Steele from out of the world he was in, to another in which his mind was only vaguely conscious, stunned by this letter that had come with the unexpectedness of a thunderbolt to change, in a single instant, every current of life in his body.

For a few moments he made no effort to grasp the individual significance of the letter, the flowers, the golden hair.

One thought filled his brain--one great, overpowering truth, which excluded everything else--and this was the realization that the woman he loved was not Colonel Becker's wife.

She was free.