think you could manage a piano down there without the old man knowing
it, and raisin' the devil generally. I promised you I'd let up on him.
Mind you keep all your promises to me. I'm glad you're gettin' on with
the six-shooter; tin cans are good at fifteen yards, but try it on
suthin' that MOVES! I forgot to say that I am on the track of your
big brother. It's a three years' old track, and he was in Arizona. The
friend who told me didn't expatiate much on what he did there, but I
reckon they had a high old time. If he's above the earth I'll find him,
you bet. The yerba buena and the southern wood came all right,--they
smelt like you. Say, Flip, do you remember the last--the VERY
last--thing that happened when you said 'Good-by' on the trail? Don't
let me ever find out that you've let anybody else kiss--"


But here the virtuous indignation of the Postmaster found vent in an
oath. He threw the letter away. He retained of it only two facts,--Flip
HAD a brother who was missing; she had a lover present in the flesh.

How much of the substance of this and previous letters Flip had confided
to her father I cannot say. If she suppressed anything it was probably
that which affected Lance's secret alone, and it was doubtful how much
of that she herself knew. In her own affairs she was frank without being
communicative, and never lost her shy obstinacy even with her father.
Governing the old man as completely as she did, she appeared most
embarrassed when she was most dominant; she had her own way without
lifting her voice or her eyes; she seemed oppressed by mauvaise honte
when she was most triumphant; she would end a discussion with a shy
murmur addressed to herself, or a single gesture of self-consciousness.

The disclosure of her strange relations with an unknown man and the