portunity whenever
responsible parties were "ridin' up inter the mounting" to entrust to
them the neighborhood mail, thus expediting its delivery perhaps by
three weeks, or even more, and receiving in every instance the
benediction of his distant beneficiaries of the backwoods.

"I'll write to the postmaster this very day!" Selwyn thought, as he
tore the envelope open and mastered its contents at a swift glance. A
half-suppressed but delighted excitement shone suddenly in his eyes,
and smoothed every line of agitation and anxiety from his brow.

"I'm a thousand times obliged to you for bringing it," he exclaimed,
"and for staying awhile and talking! I wish you would come again. But
I'm coming to see you, to return your call." He laughed gayly at the
sophisticated phrase. "Coming soon."

Hanway's growl of pretended pleasure in the prospect was rendered
nearly inarticulate by the thought of Narcissa. He had not anticipated
a return of the courtesy. He had no welcome for this stranger, and
somehow he felt that he did not altogether understand Narcissa at
times; that she had flights of fancy which were beyond him, and took a
mischievous pleasure in tantalizing him, and was freakish and hard to
control.

Moreover, under the influence of this reaction of feeling, a modicum
of his doubts of Selwyn had revived. Not that he suspected him, as
heretofore, but a phrase that had earlier struck his attention came
back to him. Selwyn had written, he said, to the traveler to come and
"investigate," and he had hesitated and chosen his phrases, and half
discarded them, and slurred over his statement. What was there to
"investigate" in the mountains? What prospect of profit worth a long,
lonely journey and a risk that ended in death? The capture of
moonshiners was said to be a paying business, and an informer also
reaped a reward. Hanway wondered if Con Hite could be the point of
"investigation," if the dead man were indeed of the revenue force.

"Oh, you needn't shut the door on me," Selwyn said, as they stood
together in the passage, and Hanway, with his instinct to cut him off,
had made a motion to draw the door after him; "this mountain air is so
bland, even when it is damp." He paused on the dripping threshold,
with his hands in the pockets of his red jacket, and surveyed with
smiling complacence the forlorn, weeping day, and the mountains
cowering under their misty veil, and the sodden dooryard, and the
wild rocks and chasms o