AS was only natural in a town of the size of Stafford, the sudden departure of Fred Walton, under circumstances no one seemed able to explain, caused wide and growing comment. A railroad man who had returned from Atlanta informed an eager cluster of idlers in the big office of the main hotel of the place that Fred had been seen lurking about the freight-yards in the city at early daylight, evidently trying to avoid being seen. The report went out, too—and no less authority accompanied it than the word of Fred’s stepmother, who, admitting the fact that she hated the young man, could not be charged with originating a direct lie—that Fred had gone without “a thread to wear,” except what he had on when leaving. The town did not need to be told that in that detail alone lay ample evidence of the gravity of the case, even if it were not said—on good authority, too—that old Simon Walton, immediately on discovering the flight, had called in Bill Johnston to consult with him. Had he taken away money? That was the question designedly put by Walton’s business rivals, and that was the question which one and all declared the old man and Toby Lassiter had promptly denied. No, it was something else; that was quite plain.

Mrs. Barry heard the news at the fence the next afternoon from the voluble tongue of a poor washerwoman, a Mrs. Chumley, who, since the downfall of her only daughter, and the handsome girl’s adoption of a life of prostitution in Augusta, had lived on alone in a cottage adjoining Mrs. Barry’s, and who, as she cleansed the linen of her neighbors for a living, besmirched their characters as her only available solace. She was fond of hinting darkly that if disgrace had come to her family by discovery, it hovered—ready to drop at any minute—over the heads of people not a bit better, and who were far too stuck-up for their own safety.

“You certainly ought to be glad the scamp’s gone,” she remarked to Mrs. Barry, as she leaned her bare, crinkled arms on the fence when she unctuously told the news. “I never liked to see him hanging round Dora. A body would see him one day over there at that big fine house with Miss Margaret, whose high-priced ruffles I’ve got in the tub right now, and the next bending his head to enter your lowly door. Things as wide apart as them two naturally are won’t hitch, neighbor, that’s all—they won’t hitch.”

“Yes, I’m glad he’s gone,” Mrs. Barry admitted, with the indiscretion most persons had under the plausible eye and guiding tone of the gossip. “Dora says he had a kind heart, and that she’s sorry for him in all his ups and downs; but, as you say, no good could come of their being together so much, at least, and it is better to have it end.”

“The postman left a letter for you-all this morning, didn’t he?” was a question Mrs. Chumley had evidently been holding in reserve.

“No, there wasn’t anything. Dora went out to the fence to see if he had any mail, but he didn’t.”

“Huh, that’s strange!” Mrs. Chumley’s purposely averted glance came back to the wrinkled face of her neighbor, and remained fixed there in a direct and probing stare. “That’s queer, for I certainly saw him hand her a letter over the fence as plain as I see that tub of suds. I saw her reading it, too.”

“You must be mistaken.” Mrs. Barry’s face had changed. There were splotches of pallor in her gaunt cheeks.

“No, I couldn’t be. I don’t make mistakes in things of that sort—not of that sort.”

Mrs. Barry was silent. She was forced to admit that if any pair of earthly eyes could detect a hidden thing those eyes were now eagerly blinking under the sinister brows before her. As she stared into the reddish, freckled face, certain long-subdued fears rose within her. She felt faint, and had a sensation as if all visible objects were whirling around her. Then she became anchored by something in the gossip’s glance which, had she has been less afraid, she would have taken as direct insult. It was as if the washerwoman were saying: “Well, you know I can sympathize with you. I have been through it all.”

“She came back in the house after the postman had gone on,” Mrs. Barry faltered, “and told me there wasn’t any letter.”

The poor woman felt that her defence, if defence it might be called, was falling on wilfully closed ears, and again she was conscious of that rocking, floating sensation. The round, red visage of the washerwoman seemed to recede from her; there was a sound as of roaring water in her ears. But through it all the insistent voice of her tormentor beat into her consciousness.

“If she didn’t show it to you, she hid it; I’m dead sure of that. She hid it. I have been watching your girl, Mrs. Barry, for several weeks, and I’m free to say that something has gone wrong with her. A body can see it in the drooping way she has in moving about. The day you sent her over for the salt I thought, on my soul, she’d drop in her tracks before she left the kitchen. Maybe the letter was to tell her where the scamp was going, or—or—well, there could be lots a fellow like that might say at such a time. But I’ll be bound, he was putting her off. They all do. It is man-nature.”

“I am sure she didn’t get any letter,” Mrs. Barry said, and she now tore herself away, conscious of her overwhelming disadvantage in the adroit woman’s hands.

“Well, you’ll find out I’m right,” was the shot which struck her in the back as she turned the corner of the cottage. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask the postman; there he is—coming down the street right now.”

But Mrs. Barry did not pause. She went into the house and closed her door. She stood in the middle of the room like a creature deprived of animation. Through the parted curtains of an open window she heard the washerwoman call out to the man in uniform:

“I just had a bet up with Mrs. Barry, Sim Carter! She must think I’m blind. I told her you left a letter at her house this morning, and she says she never saw hair nor hide of it.”

“It is there all right,” the man laughed. “I gave it to Miss Dora.”

“That’s what I told her. I say, Sim Carter, have they heard anything more yet about—” But the postman was gone.

Through the window, by stooping and peering forth, Mrs. Barry could see him crossing the street to the next house. With a heart as heavy as lead she went into the parlor; Dora was not there. She passed on to the kitchen; no one was there, either. There was something incongruous in the contented aspect of the fat, gray cat lying and purring in the sunlight on the door-sill. Bliss like that under the coat of a mere dumb brute when she had this to bear—this lurking, insinuating, maddening thing, which had been creeping slowly upon her night and day until it had assumed the shape and size of a monster of mental and spiritual torture.

She went on to Dora’s room, where she found the girl seated on her bed. The great, long-lashed, somnolent eyes, over the exquisite beauty of which men and women had marvelled, were red as from weeping. She gave her mother, as the old woman stood in the doorway, a weary, despondent glance, and then, half startled, looked down. Mrs. Barry saw the charred remains of a sheet of writing-paper in the open fireplace, and a fresh pang darted through her.

“Did you need me, mother?” Dora inquired, softly, in the musical voice so many had admired, and which to-day sounded sweeter, more appealing, than ever before.

“Mrs. Chumley says you got a letter from the postman this morning,” Mrs. Barry said, tremblingly.

The girl seemed to hesitate just an instant; then she nodded, mutely.

“Who was it from, daughter?”

“Mother, I don’t want to say—even to you. I have reasons why—”

“It was from Fred Walton! You need not deny it.”

Dora made no protest; she simply dropped her eyes to her lap, and sat motionless.

“You knew he had left, didn’t you?”

“Yes, mother. I knew he was gone.”

“And while the whole town is wondering why he went, you know, I suppose?”

“I don’t feel that I have the right to talk about it, mother.”

“Well, I sha’n’t urge you!” And the o............