"Because if you were not doing well, you might be willing to go into some other business--the post-office for instance--and buy me out. If you were here yourself, you would have your letters as soon as they arrived. Since getting _them_ seems to be your principal business, you should be on the spot to attend to it. Such an arrangement would relieve me, from a world of annoyance. You worry me, more than all the rest of the several hundred people who come here for letters. I can't stand it much longer. You will drive me mad. I shall commit suicide. I don't wish to be uncivil in a public capacity; but I can't help expressing a wish that you would go to Hell, and never let me see your face again." Foster's chagrin, at not getting his letters, would be so great, that the post-master's peculiar wish would pass unheeded; and the letter-seeker would only go away to return again, a few hours after. Usually about the tenth time he called, the mail would be in; and in the general scramble of the delivery, Foster would get _two letters_--never more, and never less. One evening, near mail time, he was, as usual on a visit to the post-office after his letters; and his mate--whose name was Farrell-- having got weary of sitting alone in his tent, came over to mine--to pass an hour or two in miner's gossip. He told me, that Foster had been for his letters seven times during the two days that had passed! "He will have to go about three times more," said Farrell, "and then he will probably get them. The mail should be in this evening." "Forster appears to think very much of his family?" I remarked to his partner. "I never saw a person so impatient for news from home." "He is certainly very anxious to hear from home," said Farrell, "but not exactly for the reasons you may be supposing. Foster and I are from the same neighbourhood, and have known each other for many years. We came to California together; and I am well acquainted with all the circumstances under which he is acting. Now, if you hailed from anywhere near that part of the world to which we belong, I should say nothing about him; but as you don't, and it's not likely you'll ever drift in that direction, there can be no more harm in my telling you what I know, than there would be in talking about some one of whom we have read, and who has been dead a thousand years ago." "Foster married when he was very young--his wife being a woman about ten years older than himself. She was worse than old--she was plain; and besides had but very little sense. Add to this, that she was always ill; and ill-tempered, and you have a woman, whom you will admit could not be very agreeable for a wife. "He had not been married over a week, before he discovered that he had been making a fool of himself.