"Hush you now, and don't be speakin' of it to a soul. The Colonel is not dead—just away in foreign parts. You see, he were very strong-willed, and so is she, and they are both hot-tempered, and he used to struggle hard—that I know to be a fact—to get the better of it, but her sharp words didn't help, and then one day there were a fine rumpus, and she said she'd rather be chained to a brute beast than to him—I heard her myself; but she were so hot that she didn't know rightly what she were saying, and he says:"
"'All right, I snap your chains, and you are free!'"
"With that he walks right out of the door, and never comes back again, nor sends her one word, and that were six years ago last Christmas. But I knows, he be alive, for he always giv' me a pocket gardener's di'ry every Christmas. Me and him were very good friends; and if you believe me, that pocket di'ry have never missed coming to me every Christmas since he went."
Harebell's face was a study; surprise, excitement, and keen interest flitted across it.
"Oh," she said, "poor Aunt Diana! How she must want to see him!"
"She's turned hard and cold, but her heart inside be right," said Andy. "I seed her take up my di'ry one day when I laid it on my pantry table, and when she put it down, her lips were all of a quiver."
"Could we write to him and ask him to come back?"
"Bless your little heart, nobody knows which quarter of the globe he be in—"
"What relation is he of mine?"
"I s'pose as how he be an uncle, eh?"