phy fetch you a piece of 'tater
pone, if you'll hol' on a minute."

She called to Aunt Zilphy, who soon came hobbling out of the kitchen
with a large square of the delicacy,--a flat cake made of mashed sweet
potatoes, mixed with beaten eggs, sweetened and flavored to suit the
taste, and baked in a Dutch oven upon the open hearth.

The boy took the gratuity, thanked her, and turned to go. Mis' Molly
was still scanning the superscription of the letter. "I wonder," she
murmured, "what old Judge Straight can be writin' to me about. Oh,
boy!"

"Yas 'm," answered the messenger, looking back.

"Can you read writin'?"

"No 'm."

"All right. Never mind."

She laid the letter carefully on the chimney-piece of the kitchen. "I
reckon it's somethin' mo' 'bout the taxes," she thought, "or maybe
somebody wants to buy one er my lots. Rena'll be back terreckly, an'
she kin read it an' find out. I'm glad my child'en have be'n to school.
They never could have got where they are now if they hadn't."

XIV

A LOYAL FRIEND

Mention has been made of certain addressed envelopes which John
Warwick, on the occasion of his visit to Patesville, had left with his
illiterate mother, by the use of which she might communicate with her
children from time to time. On one occasion, Mis' Molly, having had a
letter written, took one of these envelopes from the chest where she
kept her most valued possessions, and was about to inclose the letter
when some one knocked at the back door. She laid the envelope and
letter on a table in her bedroom, and went to answer the knock. The
wind, blowing across the room through the open windows, picked up the
envelope and bore it into the street. Mis' Molly, on her return,
missed it, looked for it, and being unable to find it, took another
envelope. An hour or two later another gust of wind lifted the bit of
paper from the ground and carried it into the open door of the cooper
shop. Frank picked it up, and observing that it was clean and unused,
read the superscription. In his conversations with Mis' Molly, which
were often about Rena,--the subject uppermost in both their minds,--he
had noted the mystery maintained by Mis' Molly about her daughter's
whereabouts, and had often wondered where she might be. Frank was an
intelligent fellow, and could put this and that together. The envelope
was addressed to a place in South Carolina. He was aware, from some
casual remark of Mis' Molly's, that R