Often he would say: "I'm afraid not, but here--you take these letters and look through 'em and make sure." Ann would take them in her hands, trembling with eagerness, and run indoors to the candlelight, and look them over. Always she came back with the little bundle of letters very slowly as if her disappointment were a heavy burden. "There'll he one next mail if I have to write it myself," Abe said one morning in October as he went on. To Harry Needles who was with him that morning he said: "I wonder why that fellow don't write to Ann. I couldn't believe that he has been fooling her but now I don't know what to think of him. Every day I have to deliver a blow that makes her a little paler and thinner. It hurts me like smashing a finger nail. I wonder what has happened to the fellow." The mail stage was late that evening. As it had not come at nine Mr. Hill went home and left Abe in the store to wait for his mail. The stage arrived a few minutes later. It came as usual in a cloud of dust and a thunder of wheels and hoofs mingled with the crack of the lash, the driver saving his horses for this little display of pride and pomp on arriving at a village. Abe examined the little bundle of letters and newspapers which the driver had left with him. Then he took a paper and sat down to read in the firelight. While he was thus engaged the door opened softly and Ann Rutledge entered. The Postmaster was not aware of her presence until she touched his arm. "Please give me a letter," she said. "Sit down, Ann," said he, very gently, as he placed a chair in the fire-glow. She took it, turning toward him with a look of fear and hope. Then he added: "I'm sorry but the truth is it didn't come." "Don't--don't tell me that again," she pleaded in a broken voice, as she leaned forward covering her face with her hands. "It is terrible, Ann, that I have to help in this breaking of your heart that is going on. I seem to be the head of the hammer that hits you so hard but the handle is in other hands. Honestly, Ann, I wish I could do the suffering for you--every bit of it--and give your poor heart a rest. Hasn't he written you this summer?" "Not since July tenth," she answered. Then she confided to Abe the fact that her lover had told her before he went away that his name was not McNeil but McNamar; that he had changed his name to keep clear of his family until he had made a success; that he had gone east to get his father and mother and bring them back with him; lastly she came to the thing that worried her most--the suspicion of her father and mother that John was not honest. "They say that nobody but a liar would live with a false name," Ann told him. "They say that he probably had a wife when he came here--that that is why he don't write to me." Then after a little silence she pleaded: "You don't think that, do you, Abe?"