Is Pap coming over before we start? If he is, you have Lin bake a peck of doughnuts, put them in the big carpet-sack. I'm glad you got the gun. I wrote Turner Simpson to send you the pup when it was old enough to wean. Your affectionate son, ALFRED GRIFFITH HATFIELD P. S. Don't forget the doughnuts. SOMERSET, PA. DEAR MUZ: It will be my luck to have Pap come to Mt. Pleasant with the doughnuts and find us all gone. We left last night. I wrote you we was going but I didn't know it until Palmer woke me up in the middle of the night. Reverend Gideon left two days before. Someone pulled me out of bed. I hollered, "Here, here, hold on!" Then I knew it was Palmer. I jumped up. He ordered me to dress quickly. I dressed and looked for Tom. I asked Palmer where he was. He said: "I've called him as often as I'm going to." I called Tom and had to wait so long for him to dress that when I got out doors there was Jake sitting up in the front seat of the wagon, and Mrs. Palmer beside him. She looked to me as if she was cryin'. Jake told us to "get in, she's going to go." Palmer was locking the doors. I heard something splash down in the well. His wife asked for the keys. "They're down in the well; old Lane, the landlord, can look for them." Mrs. Palmer looked very much worried. They left all their things excepting a few bedclothes and the sewing machine. Palmer spread the bedclothes on the panorama in the bottom of the wagon; Tom, me and him slept all the way here. Poor Mrs. Palmer set up all night beside Jake on the seat. If she ain't got the newralgy she'll katch it sure. Mrs. Palmer wouldn't get out of the wagon to eat breakfast when we stopped on the road at a country house, and Palmer spoke real cross to her and she cried. It's the only time I've seen Jake's face without a smile and he looks a different man when he ain't smiling. I like Jake and he likes me. He wants to see Pap. Reverend Gideon met us here. Palmer forgot his clothes and I heard him tell Gideon they'd have to go, he had flung the keys in the well and if Gideon went back after his clothes they was liable to fling him in jail. I believe Palmer's run off owing everybody. This thing's bound to make money. I'm sorry I came for twenty a month. If he does well he'll have to raise me. Your affectionate son, ALFRED GRIFFITH HATFIELD. P. S. The hound was to be a dog, not another kind. Palmer, the wife and Gideon, were a source of much speculation to Alfred; he could not fix their standing in his mind. The facts were that Palmer was one of those soldiers of fortune who had experimented with many things and failed in everything. He fitted Dryden's description of: