for every-day wear. He can save the good ones for Sunday. Your mother has let the Old Barn to Mrs. Revell until she gets back. I went in the other day and found it warm for the first time in my life. She keeps the furnace going and she’s not afraid to burn coal. I hardly ever see Ben from one week to another. He comes in and prowls around in the kitchen at one and two o’clock in the morning and I’m up and gone hours before he’s awake. You can get nothing out of him—he never says a half-dozen words and if you ask him a civil question he cuts you off short. I see him down-town late at night sometimes with Mrs. P. They’re thick as thieves together. I guess she’s a bad egg. This is all for this time. John Duke was shot and killed by the house detective at the Whitstone hotel Sunday night. He was drunk and threatening to shoot every one. It’s a sad thing for his wife. He left three children. She was in to see me to-day. He was well-liked by every one but a terror when he drank. My heart bled for her. She’s a pretty little woman. Liquor has caused more misery than all the other evils in the world put together. I curse the day it was first invented. Enclosed find a small check to buy yourself a present. God knows what we’re coming to. Aff. Your Father, W. O. Gant.”
She saved carefully all his letters—written on his heavy slick business stationery in the huge Gothic sprawl of his crippled right hand.
In Florida, meanwhile, Eliza surged up and down the coast, stared thoughtfully at the ungrown town of Miami, found prices too high at Palm Beach, rents too dear at Daytona, and turned inland at length to Orlando, where, groved round with linked lakes and citrous fruits, the Pentlands waited her approach, Pett, with a cold lust of battle on her face, Will with a grimace of itching nervousness while he scaled stubbily at the flaky tetter of his hand.
