eling which ran through his veins,
making his fingers feel like sticks, and powerless to hold the letter,
which dropped to the floor. With every year he had hugged closer and
closer the secret of his life, becoming more and more morbid and more
fearful, lest in some way his connection with the palmetto clearing
should be known and he fall from the high pedestal on which he had stood
so long, and from which his fall would be greater because he had been
there so long. It would all be right after he was dead. He had seen to
that, and didn't care what the world would say when he was not alive to
hear it. But he was very much alive now, and his sin bade fair to find
him out.

"Just as I feared when that rector told me who his father was," he
thought, cursing the chance which had sent the Rev. Arthur Mason to
Crompton,--cursing the Rev. Charles for giving information to Jake,--and
cursing Jake for the letter, which he spurned with his well foot, as it
lay on the floor. He had hoped the negro might be dead, as he had heard
nothing from him in a long time; and here he was, alive and waiting for
a word to come. "If he waits for that he will wait to all eternity," he
said to himself. "I shall write and make it worth his while to stay
where he is. He knows too much of Amy's birth and her mother's death to
be trusted here. Uncertainty is better than the truth. I have made
matters right for Amy, and confessed everything. They'll find it when
I'm gone, and can wag their tongues all they please. It won't hurt me
then, but while I live I'll keep up the farce. It might have been better
to have told the truth at first, but I didn't, and it's too late now.
Who in thunder is that knocking at the door? Not Amy, I hope,--and I
can't reach that letter," he continued, as there came a low rap at the
door.

"Come in!" he called, when it was repeated, and Cora, the housemaid,
entered.

She had been in the family but a few days and did not yet understand her
duties with regard to the Colonel, and know that she was not to trouble
him. Tim Biggs had been commissioned by Eloise to take her note to Mrs.
Amy, together with the chairs.

"You can't carry both at one time, so take the sea this morning, and the
wheel this afternoon," Mrs. Biggs said, just as Tom Walker appeared.

He had been to the house two or three times since the Rummage,
ostensibly to ask when Eloise was going to commence her duties as
teacher, but really to see her and hear her