e side.

"P'raps I could help ye, Cousin Phoebe," he said. "I've got mighty
strong eyesight."

"Oh, 'tain't a question of eyesight," Phoebe replied, laughing.

"Oh, I see," said Droop, smiling slyly, "letters from some young feller,
eh?"

He winked knowingly at Rebecca, who drew herself up indignantly and
looked severely down at her knitting.

Phoebe blushed, but replied quite calmly:

"Yes--some of them from a young man, but they weren't any of them
written to me."

"No?" said Droop. "Who was they to--'f I may ask?"

"They were all written to this lady."

Phoebe held something out for Droop's inspection, and he walked over
to take it.

He recognized at once the miniature on ivory which he had seen once
before in Peltonville.

"Well," he said, taking the portrait from her and eying it with his head
on one side, "if ye hadn't said 'twasn't you, I'd certainly a-thought
'twas. I'd mos' sworn 'twas your photygraph, Cousin Phoebe. Who is it,
anyway?"

"It isn't anybody," she replied, "but it _was_ Mistress Mary Burton of
Burton Hall. I'm one of her descendants, an' these are some letters she
had with her in this funny old carved box when she disappeared with her
lover. They fled to Holland and were married there, the story goes, an'
one o' their children came over in the early days o' New England. He
brought the letters an' the picture with him."

"Well, now! I want to know!" exclaimed Droop, in great admiration.
"'Twouldn't be perlite, I s'pose, to ask to hear some o' them letters?"

"Would you like to hear some of them?" Phoebe asked.

"I would fer a fact," he replied.

"Well, bring your chair over here and I'll read you one," she said.

Droop seated himself near the two sisters and Phoebe unfolded a large
and rather rough sheet of paper, yellow with age, on which Droop
perceived a bold scrawl in a faded ink.

"This seems to have been from Mary Burton's father," Phoebe said. "I
don't think he can have been a very nice man. This is what he says:

"'Dear Poll'--horrid nickname, isn't it?"

"Seems so to me," said Droop.

"'Dear Poll--I'm starting behind the grays for London, on my way, as you
know ere this, to be knighted by her Majesty. I send this ahead by
Gregory on Bess--she being fast enow for my purpose--which is to get
thee straight out of the grip of that'----"

Phoebe hesitated.

"He uses a bad word there," she said, in a low tone. "I'll go on and
leave that out."

"Yes, do," said Dro