III

Extracts from letters to the mother:

DENVER, April 3, 1897
I have now been living several days in the same hotel with Jacob Fuller.
I have his scent; I could track him through ten divisions of infantry and
find him. I have often been near him and heard him talk. He owns a good
mine, and has a fair income from it; but he is not rich. He learned
mining in a good way--by working at it for wages. He is a cheerful
creature, and his forty-three years sit lightly upon him; he could pass
for a younger man--say thirty-six or thirty-seven. He has never married
again--passes himself off for a widower. He stands well, is liked, is
popular, and has many friends. Even I feel a drawing toward him--the
paternal blood in me making its claim. How blind and unreasoning and
arbitrary are some of the laws of nature--the most of them, in fact! My
task is become hard now--you realize it? you comprehend, and make
allowances?--and the fire of it has cooled, more than I like to confess
to myself, But I will carry it out. Even with the pleasure paled, the
duty remains, and I will not spare him.

And for my help, a sharp resentment rises in me when I reflect that he
who committed that odious crime is the only one who has not suffered by
it. The lesson of it has manifestly reformed his character, and in the
change he is happy. He, the guilty party, is absolved from all
suffering; you, the innocent, are borne down with it. But be comforted