here may be neither post-office nor post, I
shall write you full particulars about our intended `location'--with
directions how to reach it. Need I be very minute? Or can I promise
myself, that your wonderful skill as a `tracker,' of which we've heard,
will enable you to discover it? They say Love is blind. I hope, yours
will not be so: else you may fail in finding the way to your sweetheart
in the wilderness.

"How I go on talking, or rather writing, things I intended to say to you
at our next meeting tinder the magnolia--our magnolia! Sad thought
this, tagged to a pleasant expectation: for it must be our last
interview under the dear old tree. Our last anywhere, until we come
together again in Texas--perhaps on some prairie where there are no
trees. Well; we shall then meet, I hope, never more to part; and in the
open daylight, with no need either of night, or tree-shadows to conceal
us. I'm sure father, humbled as he now is, will no longer object. Dear
Charles, I don't think he would have done so at any time, but for his
reverses. They made him think of--never mind what. I shall tell you
all under the magnolia.

"And now, master mine--this makes you so--be punctual! Monday night,
and ten o'clock--the old hour. Remember that the morning after? I
shall be gone--long before the wild-wood songsters are singing their
`_reveille_' to awake you. Jule will drop this into our tree
post-office this evening--Saturday. As you've told me you go there
every day, you'll be sure of getting it in time; and once more I may
listen to your flattery, as when you quoted the words of the old song,
making me promise to come, saying you would `show the night flowers
their queen.'

"Ah! Charles, how easy to keep that promise! How sweet the flattery
was, is, and ever will be, to yours,--

"Helen Armstrong."

"And that letter was found on Dick Darke?" questions a voice, as soon as
the reading has come to an end.

"It war dropped by him," answers Woodley; "and tharfor ye may say it war
found on him."

"You're sure of that, Simeon Woodley?"

"Wal, a man can't be sure o' a thing unless he sees it. I didn't see it
myself wi' my own eyes. For all that, I've had proof clar enough to
convince me; an' I'm reddy to stan' at the back o' it."

"Damn the letter!" exclaims one of the impatient ones, who has already
spoken in similar strain; "the picture, too! Don't mistake me, boys. I
ain't referrin' eyther to the young lad