Persis
immediately proceeded to fold the letter and seal the envelope, his
respite was brief.

"Persis, did you know there was insanity in my family?"

Persis, applying a crumpled stamp to the tip of her tongue, started
violently. "Good gracious, Thomas, no! I never heard it mentioned."

"I thought maybe 'twas my duty to speak to you about it. It was my
great-uncle, Captain Silas Hardin. He was my father's uncle, and he--"

"Why, I know all about him, Thomas. How he was shipwrecked off in the
Indian Ocean somewhere and floated around on a raft, and the different
ones got crazy with the heat and thirst and all and jumped overboard.
And it was an English ship that found the old captain, and he was just
raving when they took him aboard. I can remember him when I was a
little girl. There was a blue anchor tattooed on his hand, and I
thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. But then he was
as sensible as anybody."

"Yes, he was all right in his later days, but when he first came home
from England, he had lots of queer ways about him, I've heard my mother
say. And as long as he lived, he'd stand off and stare at the corner
of the room where there wasn't nothing with his eyes kind of fixed, and
it was enough to make your hair rise up to look at him."

"I don't wonder, poor soul. I guess if we'd seen what he had, there'd
be times when it would all come back to us. By the way, Thomas, seeing
as you go right past the post-office, I'll ask you to mail this letter.
I want it to be sure to get off the first mail."

Thomas tacitly accepted the commission by holding out his hand for the
letter. Then he read the superscription. "W. Thompson! Why, there's
a W. Thompson in Clematis."

"This," replied Persis, and the confidence of her tone would have
warmed the heart of young Mr. Thompson, "this is a different one."

Thomas waited to hear more, but no further particulars were vouchsafed.
He felt mildly aggrieved. "Didn't know you had acquaintances in
Cleveland," he suggested by way of a stimulus to confidence.

"I haven't many." Persis compressed her lips, and Thomas looked again
at the envelope. The sense of elation due to the discovery that Persis
was disposed to regard the insanity of Captain Silas Hardin lightly,
was eclipsed by a new anxiety. Persis had friends of whose existence
he was unaware. She corresponded with men in distant cities. These
apparently trivial facts took on greater imp