ch my legs and saunter among the old headstones and the wafted
fragrance.

His aunt (or his cousin, or whichever of them it had been) was certainly
right as to his inheriting a pleasant and pointed gift of speech; and a
responsive audience helps us all. Such an audience I certainly was for
young John Mayrant, yet beneath the animation that our talk had filled
his eyes with lay (I seemed to see or feel) that other mood all the
time, the mood which had caused the girl behind the counter to say to
me that he was "anxious about something." The unhappy youth, I was
gradually to learn, was much more than that--he was in a tangle of
anxieties. He talked to me as a sick man turns in bed from pain; the
pain goes on, but the pillow for a while is cool.

Here there broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterly
like the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell it
to you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which was
beginning so actively to concern me--the love difficulties of John
Mayrant.

It was the letter-carrier.

We had come, from our secluded seats, round a corner, and so by the
vestry door and down the walk beside the church, and as I read to myself
the initials upon the stones wherewith the walk was paved, I drew near
the half-open gateway upon Worship Street. The postman was descending
the steps of the post-office opposite. He saw me through the gate and
paused. He knew me, too! My face, easily marked out amid the resident
faces he was familiar with, had at once caught his attention; very
likely he, too, had by now learned that I was interested in the battle
of Cowpens; but I did not ask him this. He crossed over and handed me a
letter.

"No use," he said most politely, "takin' it away down to Mistress
Trevise's when you're right here, sir. Northern mail eight hours late
to-day," he added, and bowing, was gone upon his route.

My home letter, from a man, an intimate running mate of mine, soon had
my full attention, for on the second page it said:--

"I have just got back from accompanying her to Baltimore. One of us
went as far as Washington with her on the train. We gave her a dinner
yesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell. She tried our new
toboggan fire-escape on a bet. Clean from the attic, my boy. I imagine
our native girls will rejoice at her departure. However, nobody's
engaged to her, at least nobody here. How many may fancy themselves so
elsewhere I can'