"Has your friend gone?" he asked, in a very quiet tone.
"Not come!" exclaimed Keswick. "That's odd! However, there are two hours yet before dinner."
The two hours passed and no Lawrence Croft appeared; nor came he at all that day. About dusk the man at the Green Sulphur Springs rode over with a note from Mr Croft. The note was to Miss March, of course, and it simply stated that the writer was very sorry he could not keep the appointment he had made with her, but that it had suddenly become necessary for him to return to the North without continuing the journey he had planned; that he was much grieved to be deprived of the opportunity of seeing her again; but that he would give himself the pleasure, at the earliest possible moment, of calling on Miss March when she arrived in New York.
When Miss Roberta had read this note she handed it to Keswick, who, when he returned it, asked: "Does that suit you?"
"No," said she, "it does not suit me at all."
It was mail day at the very small village known as Howlett's, and to the fence in front of the post-office were attached three mules and a horse. Inside the yard, tied to the low bough of a tree, was a very lean and melancholy horse, on which had lately arrived Wesley Green, the negro man who, twice a week, brought the mail from Pocohontas, a railway station, twenty miles away. There was a station not six miles from Howlett's, but, for some reason, the mail bag was always brought from and carried to Pocohontas; Wesley Green requiring a whole day for a deliberate transit between the two points.
In the post-office, which was the front room of a small wooden house approached by a high flight of steps, was the postmistress, Miss Harriet Corvey, who sat on the floor in one corner, while before her extended a semicircle of men and boys. In this little assemblage certain elderly men occupied seats which were considered to belong to them quite as much as if they had been hired pews in a church, and behind them stood up a row of tall young men and barefooted boys of the neighborhood, while, farthest in the rear, were some quiet little darkies with mail bags slung across their shoulders.
On a chair to the right, and most convenient to
Miss Harriet, sat old Madison Chalkley, the biggest and most venerable citizen of the neighborhood. Mr Chalkley never, by any chance, got a letter, the only mail matter he received being, "The Southern Baptist Recorder," which came on Saturdays, but, like most of the people present, he was at the post-office every mail day to see who got anything. Next to him sat Colonel Iston, a tall, lean, quiet old gentleman, who had, for a long series of years, occupied the position of a last apple on a tree. He had no relatives, no friends with whom he corresponded, no business that was not conducted by word of mouth. In the last fifteen years he had received but one letter, and that had so surprised him that he carried it about with him three days before he opened it, and then he found that it was really intended for a gentleman of the same name in another county. And yet everybody knew that if Colonel Iston failed to appear in his place on mail day, it would be because he was dead or prostrated by sickness.