his gallant
little grin at disappointment. "But he _will_," he stoutly whispers.

Gentle old Uncle Robert grows fierce. "Ef I had that varmint here, I
vum I c'd wring his neck!"

I'm sorry to report that I am not getting on very well with hating
the Deacon. (Of course, you've kept the intervening air quivering
with your admonitory wirelesses!) He is suffering so hideously, and
so determinedly, like a fakir. He feels he must speed the parting
soul with the Scriptures and he reads terrifying things about weird
beasts,--lion-mouthed leopards with feet like bears--and when he goes
downstairs I try--very clumsily, M.D.--to tell Dan'l about the God
you know, the one who goes with you into dark alleys and dark hearts.
I wish you were here to do it.

Dan'l's faith is indeed the substance of things hoped for and the
evidence of things not seen, but I want to put a warm, tangible lie
into his thin little claws before he goes.... Uncle Robert has "been
an' went" since I began this letter, and again I must go up to Dan'l
and tell him "Not _to-day_."

I'm a coward, M.D. I've never seen death so close before, and I want
to run away. But I won't.

J. V.

P.S. I called on the Low Down Wilkes this morning. Mrs. L.D.W. was
wearing my suit over a wrapper of faded red calico, but there was
nothing in her manner to indicate that I had ever seen it before.

_Saturday._

Here is my story, Michael Daragh, and it is your story, too, for you
shamed me into doing it. I am sending it off to the brown-gowned
monthly on the stern and rock-bound coast, and this carbon to you.
Now will you write and tell me if you like it? _Honestly!_ (I know I
said I didn't want you to write me until I had landed a story there,
but all this grief and grimness brings a sense of bleak loneliness,
and _if_ you think I've won back what I've lost, if you think I've
found the vision which will keep my soul from perishing, tell me
so.)

J. V.

_Sunday Night._

I've been making circus all day, M.D.----

"Tooting joy, tooting hope,
Willy wully wah hoo ...
I am the golden dream,
Singing science, singing steam--
Listen to the lion roar--"

I've roared myself hoarse but I got him to sleep at last. I have
figured it out and I see that I can't hear from either you or th