ite. You remember ez I told ez how she was a
scollard."

The master sat back in his chair white and dumb. Incredible,
extraordinary, and utterly unlooked for as was this revelation, he felt
instinctively that it was true.

"I couldn't read it myself--ez you know. I didn't keer to ax any one
else to read it for me--you kin reckon why, too. And that's why I'm
troublin' you to-night, Mr. Ford--ez a friend."

The master with a desperate effort recovered his voice. "It is
impossible. The lady who wrote those letters does not bear your name.
More than that," he added with hasty irrelevance, "she is so free that
she is about to be married, as you might have read. You have made a
mistake, the handwriting may be like, but it cannot be really your
wife's."

Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. "It's her'n--there's no mistake. When
a man, Mr. Ford, hez studied that handwrite--havin', so to speak,
knowed it on'y from the OUTSIDE--from seein' it passin' like between
friends--that man's chances o' bein' mistook ain't ez great ez the man's
who on'y takes in the sense of the words that might b'long to everybody.
And her name not bein' the same ez mine, don't foller. Ef she got a
divorce she'd take her old gal's name--the name of her fammerly. And
that would seem to allow she DID get a divorce. What mowt she hev called
herself when she writ this?"

The master saw his opportunity and rose to it with a chivalrous
indignation, that for the moment imposed even upon himself. "I decline
to answer that question," he said angrily. "I refuse to allow the name
of any woman who honors me with her confidence to be dragged into the
infamous outrage that has been committed upon me and common decency. And
I shall hold the thief and scoundrel--whoever he may be--answerable to
myself in the absence of her natural protector."

Uncle Ben surveyed the hero of these glittering generalities with
undisguised admiration. He extended his hand to him gravely.

"Shake! Ef another proof was wantin', Mr. Ford, of that bein' my wife's
letter," he said, "that high-toned style of yours would settle it. For,
ef thar was one thing she DID like, it was that sort of po'try. And one
reason why her and me didn't get on, and why I skedaddled, was because
it wasn't in my line. Et's all in trainin'! On'y a man ez had the Fourth
Reader at his fingers' ends could talk like that. Bein' brought up on
Dobell--ez is nowhere--it sorter lets me outer you, ez it did outer HER.
But