ollowing:

"NEW YORK, March --, 1862.

"To MR. EPHRAIM BARLOW, Silverton, Mass.

"Has Mrs. Wilford Cameron been in Silverton since last September?
W. CAMERON."

To this he was prompted by Esther's having suggested Silverton, as the
place where her mistress had possibly been, and taking warning by his
past experience with Genevra, he resolved to give Katy the benefit of
every doubt, to investigate closely, before taking the decisive step,
which even while Tom Tubbs was talking to him had flashed into his mind.
Perhaps Katy had been to Silverton in her excited state, and if so the
case was not so bad, though he blamed her much for concealing it from
him. At first he thought of telegraphing to Morris, but pride kept him
from that, and Uncle Ephraim was made the recipient of the telegram,
which startled him greatly, being the first of the kind sent directly to
him.

As it chanced the deacon was in town that day, and at the store just
across the street from the telegraph office. This the agent knew by old
Whitey, who was standing meekly at the hitching-post, covered with his
blanket, a faded woolen bedspread, which years before Aunt Betsy had
spun and woven herself.

"A letter for me!" Uncle Ephraim said, when the message was put into his
hands. "Who writ it?" and he turned it to the light trying to recognize
the handwriting.

"I think it wants an answer," the boy said, as Uncle Ephraim thrust it
into his pocket, and taking up his molasses jug and codfish started for
the door.

"May be it does. I'll look again," and depositing his fish and jug
safely under the wagon box, the old man adjusted his spectacles, and
with the aid of the boy deciphered the dispatch.

"What does it mean?" he asked, but the boy volunteered no ideas, and the
simple-hearted deacon asked next: "What shall I tell him?"

"Why, tell him whether she has been here or not since last September.
Write on the envelope what you want sent, so I can take it back; and
come, hurry up your cakes, I can't wait all day," and young America,
having thus asserted its superiority over old, began to kick the melting
snow, while Uncle Ephraim, greatly bewildered and perplexed, bent
himself to the tremendous task of writing the four words:

"Not to my knowledge." To this he appended: "Yours, with regret, Ephraim
Barlow," and handing it to the waiting boy, unhitched old Whitey, and
stepping into his wagon, drove home as rapidly as the half-frozen March
mud would