elaus, he slit the oil-silk and a few discoloured
letters fell out. He gathered them up from off the coverlet and waited.

"Read," said Archelaus. Ishmael dived into a pocket for his spectacles,
found them, adjusted them, and began to turn over the letters. Archelaus
pointed to one with his trembling old finger. "That first," he
whispered; "take that one first." Then, as Ishmael settled himself to
read, he added with a low chuckle: "Knaw the writen', do 'ee?"

It had seemed vaguely familiar to Ishmael, but no more, and not even now
could he say whose it was. It was very old-fashioned writing and very
characterless, the hand which had in his youth been called "Italian,"
and it seemed to him to have nothing distinctive about it. "Never mind,"
said Archelaus as he shook his head; "you'll knaw fast enough. Read."

This is what Ishmael read by the evening light that flooded the room:

"Dear Archelaus," ran the letter, "I don't know whatever I shall do. I
wish I was dead. Why did you come back and trouble me? There were plenty
of women where you came from. You have told me about them often enough.
I never wanted you to make love to me. I never liked it, only I couldn't
help it. And now there's a baby coming and he hasn't been near me for
over two months. He seems as though he didn't want me any more, and I
don't know what to do, because now he'll have to know...."

Ishmael read so far, and though he did not understand what he read, and
it sent no rush of knowledge over his soul, yet a deadly sense of fear,
of yet he knew not what, sent his heart pounding through his frame. The
letter fell to his knee and Archelaus, watching, said:

"I told her to speak 'ee soft and let her lil' body lie against 'ee...."

Ishmael picked up the letter again, looked from the date--the month of
January, in 1868--to the signature, "Phoebe Ruan," before he let the
letter drop again. Still he said nothing, and after a minute Archelaus
went on.

"Read the next," he said.

The next was but a further plaint, signed with Phoebe's name, in a
rather more uneven hand. Ishmael found himself remembering, as his eye
met them again, her little tricks with the pen--the wandering tails to
her words, the elaborate capitals which gave a touch of individuality to
the regular slanting lines. He picked up the last letter.

"Dear Archelaus," it began--Phoebe would never have suffered
sufficiently from a sense of fitness to alter the conventional
beginning, w