Mr. Owen had started eastward on the day after his interview with the two ladies of Carroll Farms; he had started westward on the day after the arrival of a letter from his junior warden. This letter, written in a clear, old-fashioned hand, decorated with much underscoring, was a mixture of the formal phraseology of the warden's youth and that too-modern lightness which he had learned in his later years, and of which Miss Honoria so justly disapproved. He was supposed to be writing about church business. Having finished that (in six lines), he added an epitome of the news of the whole village, from the slippers which Miss Sophy Greer, at the north end of Edgerley Street, was working for him (the rector)--ecclesiastical borders, with the motto "Vestigia nulla retrorsum"--down to the last new duck in the duck-pond at Chapultepec, the south end of it. Among the items was this: "That amusing fellow Dupont is, I am sorry to say, ill, and I suspect seriously. It is a return of the fever he had in New York, I am told. He is at the Cove, and the Walleys are taking care of him. It has leaked out" ("leaked out"--oh, poor Miss Honoria!) "that he has no money, not even enough to pay for his medicines--those musicians are always an improvident lot, you know. But our lovely Madam Carroll, ministering angel that she is, pitying lady of the manor, has supplied everything that has been necessary. I have just heard, as I write these lines, that the poor fellow is no better." The rector, upon his return, busied himself in attending to the many duties which had accumulated during his absence. He did not go to the Farms immediately; but as he was making no calls for the present--owing to the accumulation--the omission was not noticed. The musician was very ill, and every one was sorry. His poverty was now generally known; but Madam Carroll was doing all that was needful, and the poor wanderer lacked nothing. That was what they called him now--the "poor wanderer;" it was a delicate way of phrasing the fact that he was without means. Far Edgerley people were as far as possible from being mercenary; they had no intention of turning their backs upon Dupont because he was poor. They were poor themselves, and, besides, that had never been the Southern way. They would gladly have helped him now, had there been opportunity, and they looked forward to helping him as far as they were able so soon as he should have recovered his health. But at present Madam Carroll was doing the whole, and the whole was only--could be only--a doctor and medicines.