I went down to meet them at once. Florence and Miss Elizabeth Collins, Colonel Buckstone's stenographer, rose to greet me.
Neither I nor any other man knew at that time that Florence had done her family a great favor when the Collins home had been threatened by a mortgage. Years after it helped me to understand the conduct of Elizabeth. In a moment I had heard their story.
Before going home that evening the Colonel had dictated a letter to Roswell Dunbar, Florence's father, calculated to fill his mind with alarm and cause him to recall her from Griggsby. Miss Collins had left the office with her employer, who had put the letter with others in his overcoat pocket, intending to mail them in the morning, the post office having closed for the night. She said that the Colonel had been imbibing freely that day and had gone to the Palace Hotel for supper.
“I have decided to start for home in the morning,” said Florence. “I must reach there before the letter does, and probably I shall not come back.”
“Don't go,” I said. “I'll attend to the letter.”
“How?” she asked.
“I don't know, but in some way,” I said, with the strong confidence of youth in its own capacity. “I only ask that you give me permission to consult my friend Dan'l Webster Smead in strict confidence. It won't do to let the Colonel drive us out of town. He is the one to be driven out.”
Florence agreed with me, and I walked home with the girls, and left them in a better frame of mind.
I asked Smead to come to my room with me, and laid the facts before him. He sat smoking thoughtfully, and said not a word until I had finished. Then he said in that slow drawl of his:
“I take it that you are willing to suffer, if need be, for the sake of decency and fair women.”