This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
PART XVI.
CHAPTER I.
"Please, sir, be this note for you?" asked the waiter.
"For me,—yes; it is my name."
I did not recognize the handwriting, and yet the note was from one whose writing I had often seen. But formerly the writing was cramped, stiff, perpendicular (a feigned hand, though I guessed not it was feigned); now it was hasty, irregular, impatient, scarce a letter formed, scarce a word that seemed finished, and yet strangely legible withal, as the hand writing of a bold man almost always is. I opened the note listlessly, and read,—
"I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her go. Well! I did not throw myself under the hoofs of the horses. I write this in a public- house, not far. Will you follow the bearer, and see once again the outcast whom all the rest of the world will shun?"
Though I did not recognize the hand, there could be no doubt who was the writer.
"The boy wants to know if there's an answer," said the waiter.