He was still scornfully angry, but he was anxious; he stopped. The door was set ajar and Susan's face peered through the crack. She was grinning joyously. "Come inside!" she whispered. He frowned, but he obeyed her. With one lightning glance about him and one swift memory of the last moment he stood there, he shut the door behind him and waited to hear what the bent and shrivelled old woman had to say. She drew a paper from the folds of her dress. "Hyar 'tis!" she exclaimed, handling the envelope lovingly. "I cyarnt read, but I'd know dis writin', anywhars; 'tis straight up an' down, an' clear an' hones'!" Lawson seized it quickly. The envelope was directed to Mr. Robert Holloway. He gave a smothered exclamation. The writing was clear and decided, the postmark, "Keswick." The glance he flashed Susan was scathing, but she stood innocently attentive; her manner might have deceived a man of her own State; it did deceive Lawson with his western ignorance of her race. "She don't write much, Miss Frances don't." Susan had no word to say of the daily message over the telephone, and Lawson himself never thought of that way of communication. "She allus was mighty kerles 'bout writin'." "And she's there, as near as that?" Susan nodded. "Dat's whar she was when she writ, but she 's visitin' 'roun', an' we nebber did know jes' whar she was; but dat's all right." Lawson hurried into the library. The daily paper of the town lay on the table; he turned the pages to the railroad schedule, Susan eyeing him watchfully from the door. His morning lecture was important, he could not cut it. There were no trains he could make down and back in the afternoon; he would drive. His mind full of the determination he came out in the hall. He did not even notice Susan, eagerly expectant, as she stood there, of another bill to add to her hoard. His eyes were fixed on the carved newel post where Frances' trembling hand had lain when last he had seen her. Could the distrustful old darkey have read his heart she might have forgiven him and befriended him, for at that moment it held nothing but strong, intense love for the girl she herself idolized, and the resolve to see her, to make his peace with her, to overcome whatever barrier, ghostly or real, had risen between them. He was not a whit afraid of any rival. The only effect such declaration had had was to crystallize his dreaming to decision for action, and to fairly madden his impatient nature that was held in leash, action being impossible.