wers and weeds by the way-side
seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer
mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future,
which she could almost interpret.

"I wonder what is going to happen?" she thought. "Something is going
to happen." She was glad that Evelyn was not with her, as usual, but
had gone for a drive with a young friend who had a pony-carriage. She
felt that she could not have borne her sister's curious glances at
the letter which she was sure would be in the post-office box. It was
there when she entered the dirty little place. She saw one letter
slanted across the dusty glass of the box. It was not a lock box, and
she had to ask the postmaster for the letter.

"Number twenty-four, please," she said.

The postmaster was both bungling and curious. He was a long time
finding the box, then in giving her the letter. Maria felt dizzy.
When at last he handed it to her with an inquisitive glance, she
almost ran out of the office. When she was out-doors she glanced at
the post-mark and saw it was Edgham. When she came to a lonely place
in the road, when she was walking between stone-walls overgrown with
poison-ivy, and meadowsweet, and hardhack, and golden-rod, she opened
the letter. Just as she opened it she heard the sweet call of a robin
in the field on her left, and the low of a cow looking anxiously over
her bars.

The letter was written on soiled paper smelling strongly of tobacco,
and it enclosed another smaller, sealed envelop. Maria read:

"Deer Miss,--I now tak my pen in hand to let you no that Gladys she
is ded. She had a little boy bon, and he and she both died. Gladys
she had been coffin for some time befoar, and jest befor she was took
sick, she give me this letter, and sed for me to send it to you if
ennything happened to her.

"Excuse hast and a bad pen. Mrs. Mann."

Maria trembled so that she could hardly stand. She looked hastily
around; there was no one in sight. She sank down on a large stone
which had fallen from the stone wall on the left. Then she opened the
little, sealed letter. It was very short. It contained only one word,
one word of the vulgar slang to which poor Gladys had become
habituated through her miserable life, and yet this one word of slang
had a meaning of faithfulness and honor which dignified it. Maria
read, "Nit." and she knew that Gladys had died and had not told.

Chapter XXIX

It is frequently a chain of