There was a mystery about the letter that had taken Shorty up to the Doctor's early that December morning and sent an eager, anxious, loving-hearted woman out on the New Haven Railway by the noon train. It had come by post to Shorty just as he was starting for school, and he had run first to the Lawrences' and then, after five minutes' eager, excited talk with Mrs. Park, nearly all the way to Murray Hill, and caught the Doctor on his customary tramp to college before he reached the reservoir. It was only a little note. It said that Snipe had been ill of some kind of fever, that he had found work and was feeling independent and happy, hoping soon to make enough to send five dollars to Seymour, when he was taken ill. Snipe thought he "must have been flighty a few days," but people had been very kind to him. He had helped two boys--his employer's sons--with their arithmetic every night until his prostration, and it had pleased their mother and father both, but he had let out something about his own mother, and now they were telling him how cruel he had been to her and how he ought to go back to her and put an end to her suffering. Snipe said he couldn't go back to Rhinebeck and wouldn't go back to Aunt Lawrence, but if Shorty would send the enclosed note to his mother she would know that he loved her and thought of her constantly; and then he asked Shorty to write to him how the boys were and whether they missed him, and what Seymour said. "Address your letter care Massasoit House, Bridgeport, and I'll get it safely, only don't tell anybody." And, instead of writing, Shorty had run to Pop and Pop had turned back with him, had sent notes by him to Mrs. Park and to Halsey, bidding the latter give Shorty whole holiday, which, to the astonishment of the school, he had declined.