A few rare references made in unusual moments of confidence by Durrance had only informed Calder of her name, and assured him that his friend would be very glad to change it if he could.

He looked at Durrance--a man so trained to vigour and activity that his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than an accident of the country in which he lived; a man, too, who came to the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who comes into an inheritance; a man to whom these desolate tracts were home, and the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads merely the other places; and he understood the magnitude of the calamity which had befallen him.

Therefore he was most anxious to know more of this girl who wrote to Durrance from Donegal, and to gather from her letters, as from a mirror in which her image was reflected, some speculation as to her character.

For if she failed, what had this friend of his any longer left?
"You would like to hear them, I expect," he insisted.

"You have been away eight weeks." And he was interrupted by a harsh laugh.
"Do you know what I was thinking when I stopped you ?" said Durrance.
"Why, that I would read the letters after you had gone.