“Finis” was written in deliberate ink; but a white space below had left room for a scrawl in pencil: “You are out there in the cab, little woman, and Canaan is around and about me; yet I must not speak. When you read these pages you will know and understand. The Old One is fighting hard with me to break the faith; but I cannot, now. Our life together must not begin this way. You must go home, and I must not have it on my soul that I even so much as touched you. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. In my stupid, iron-set, prejudiced, superstitious brain you are a child until tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be something other, my right woman. That other I will claim, but—tomorrow. Tomorrow!
“Your ecstatic, maybe-foolish, and altogether glorified,
“Vinegar Saint.”
“Oh, Allen Blynn! Allen Blynn!” the tearful little woman laughed in her joy. “You are too funny! You are too, too funny!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
No attempt was made to standardize dialect.