“Well, Mr. Purdy, I would like to have a few minutes talk with you, if you are not too busy.”
“I am directing papers for the mail, but I am not pressed for time, as the mail does not go until to-night.”
“Thank you,” said the squire, as a mere form, for there did not appear to be any particular cause for gratitude. And he drew from his breast pocket a certain copy of the Angleton Advertiser and handed it to the man, saying again: “Thank you, Mr. Purdy. My name is Force. I only wish to ask you—and I hope without offense—what is the meaning of the obituary notice of a living man that is published in the first column of this paper?”
Purdy took the paper in a slow and dazed manner, and looked at the column which Mr. Force pointed out to him.
And as he looked he stared and stared.
“I—I—don’t understand!” he said at last, looking from the paper up to the face of his strange visitor.
“Neither do I understand, Mr. Purdy; but if we put our heads together perhaps we may be able to do so,” replied Abel Force.
The printer turned the paper over and over, in and out, up and down, and, lastly, back to the front page; and then he stared at the obituary notice of his landlord.
“What do you make of it?” inquired Abel Force.
“I can’t make anything of it. But I think it will make a lunatic of me! This is certainly my paper! I know my paper as well as I know my children. This is certainly my paper—though it is an old one—and this is the obituary notice of Col. Anglesea, who was alive and well at that very time, and is so at this present, as I think.”