He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and received no reply.
Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself from him, and that she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.
To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard from the children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough to write.

He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have any money to send, and because they did not ask for any.

Dumbly he sensed, as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children were growing up.

But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling youngsters whom Minnie was forever worrying over and who seemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of his wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sage while he and their distracted mother searched for them.

For a long while--how many years Brit could not remember--they had been living in Los Angeles.