Inside he found several pages of the same fine writing, and he read it with his arm round the neck of one of the horses.

The lantern, which he had hung on a nail in the stall, sent down dim candlelight upon the pair.
When Caius had read the letter, he turned it over and over curiously, and began to read it again, more out of sheer surprise than from any relish for its contents.

It was written by one Madame Josephine Le Maitre, and came from a place which, although not very far from his own home, was almost as unknown to him as the most remote foreign part.

It came from one of the Magdalen Islands, that lie some eighty miles' journey by sea to the north of his native shore.

The writer stated that she knew few men upon the mainland--in which she seemed to include the larger island of Prince Edward--that Caius Simpson was the only medical man of whom she had any personal knowledge who was at that time unemployed.