Show 44 STUD EXT LITE dead man's mail but after a while I made myself believe that I was doing right and broke the seal The letter I read was this : “Boston Mass Sept 18 19 — “Dear Brother: “Your letter came and it was like a voice from the dead I am so glad you have a good companion ami that you are in comfortable circumstances for truly I your sister believe in you as always and have always defended 3011 when anybody assailed your good nameI You are as innocent as I am know that 3011 did not take any of the funds entrusted to your keeping and time will prove you innocent “1 see every day mcmlers of your class and I imagine that a shadow clouds their faces at the mention of your name Yet there are some of them I know who would stand behind you to the last You have not disgraced them for an innocent man though accused and trampled upon can rise You were President of the class and some day this same old class will see vou as you arc — innocent before God” When I got this far in the letter I I stopped tears filled my eyes had poor Bill’s past I did not bury Bill that day hut made a trip down to Greenhorn and there found an undertaker I told him I wanted to send Bill The undertaker understood and next day poor old Bill was ready for his last journey I saw the body safe on the train then I telegraphed the “sister” whose letter I had It was then that I found that my four years of English in college was useless I could not write the sorrow I felt hut finally I wrote on a yellow blank “The brother is His dead — he is coming home home Companion” That night after had given my year's earnings to the undertaker I went hack to the cabin It was I know did not so lonely that Bill was so near to me He was a companion and I missed him so The davs went bv hut I never forgot I Bill yes two or three years later when I was packing up to go back home down behind the wall of the hunk I came across a photograph of a group of college men in senior gowns There was a postage stamp over one of the faces The whole story of Bill came into my mind like a flash I washed the stamp off — you know whose face I found C) Macgrcgor |