Johnathan, with small-bored shrewdness, had given orders at the local postoffice that all Nathan’s mail was to be saved and delivered to himself. And as no letters with Ohio postmarkings or addressed in feminine penmanship ever arrived in those following months, Jonathan knew the “affair” was over, and, praise the Almighty, “over” successfully. Carol’s letters came to me in a double envelope, with Nat’s name inside. When he wasn’t at Caleb Gridley’s in the evening, he was at my house using my desk and typewriter answering them. Something of the old intimacy between Nat and myself was restored after Carol’s departure. I had meanwhile finished high school but been obliged to take a job in the local newspaper office. After work, or on Sundays, we fell into the habit of taking long walks about the town and countryside, while the boy raved to me of the undying affection in Carol’s letters or his increasing successes at the factory. Carol, it appeared, had recovered her aplomb upon her return to A-higher. Her letters were full of minute accountings of her time and activities and how she was “getting her clothes ready” and what house in town Nathan should try to procure for their habitation, and what a boor and a bear Johnathan was, and what a trial and a nuisance he must be to the son generally. And yet, through all of that twentieth year, and especially throughout the summer, there were days and nights when the boy’s loneliness almost crazed him. Through the town he wandered, bareheaded beneath the stars. There was one ballad he and Carol had sung over and over until the lad knew the words from memory. Nat hummed the tune to himself on many starlit nights when he walked out toward the old lumber pile on the Gilberts Mills road: “I am writing to you, Molly, while the fair moon softly shines, As it did the night before you went away; When it shone in all its glory And I told Love’s old, old story And you promised you’d return and wed some day.” It was a sickly, sentimental thing, being sung in all the picture shows and Wednesday-evening courting hours. But it was the second verse which probed the boy’s heart and always brought tears to his eyes: “All alone I’m roaming, Molly, Down the dear old village lane, To the wildwood where we strolled with hearts so light; In the old church they are singing, Fondest memories it’s bringing Of the girl I love, so far away, to-night. Some folks laugh and call it folly When I tell them you’re still true, But you love me, don’t you, Molly? Say you’re coming back, please do!” The boy forgot all about his poetry, unless it was to try putting his loneliness and heart-hunger in words. Yet somehow he could not publish these. He filed them away with Carol’s letters. He lived, moved, had his being, in the box-shop.