But that evening Mrs. Larry Masters posted a letter to Colonel Tom Wallifarro.
"Morgan has discovered Anne!" she said in part. "He has been too close to her until now to realize her attractiveness; but she has been noticed by other men, and at last Morgan is awake. They have quarrelled, and next to making love that's the most significant of developments. My dear kinsman and benefactor, you know what our mutual hope has been, and I think its fulfilment is not so far away! Tonight when I sipped my claret at dinner I drank a silent toast, 'To my girl and your boy.'"
While Mrs. Masters was writing that note, her daughter was sitting at another desk in the same room, and her letter was addressed to a post-office back of Cedar Mountain.
When Boone received that second missive, he turned the envelope over in his hand and gazed at it for a long while. Even then he did not open it until he sat alone in a place where the forests were silent, save for the call of a blue-jay and the diligent rapping of a "cock of the woods" who was sapping and mining for grubs.
The boy held between thumb and forefinger an envelope of a sort he had never seen before, of thin outer paper over a dark coloured lining. In one corner was a stamp of the French Republic, and there in writing that had crossed the sea was his name and address.
"She found time to write to me," he said rapturously to himself, and then dropping intentionally and whimsically into his old, childhood speech he added, nodding his head sagely to a pert squirrel that frisked its tail near by, "She's done writ me a letter cl'ar from t'other world."
It was that same summer, when Anne had gone to Europe, that Boone came back from college, very serious and taciturn, and McCalloway was prompt to guess the reason.
"You went down to Louisville, didn't you?" he inquired, as the two sat by the doorstep on the day of the boy's return, and Boone nodded.
The man did not nag him with questions. His seasoned wisdom contented itself with smoking on in silence, and after a little the lad jerked his head.