A few days later the ragged Giles walked into Griggsby with a battered beaver hat on his head and a gold-headed cane in his left hand, while with his right he wielded a bull whip over the backs of a pair of oxen which the Colonel had purchased.
CHAPTER VI
DAN'L WEBSTER SMEAD was right. Colonel Buckstone went to New York, and Ralph joined him there. Weeks passed, and they were still absent. Then the truth came to me and to Florence in a letter from Ralph, which she asked me to read. It ran as follows:
“Dearest Florence,—I'm having a hard time with the governor. I want you to know that I do not believe a word of all I've heard about you, and that I shall never care about anybody else. I'm going to England with my aunt. Dad suddenly decided that for me here in New York, and we've had an awful row. It seems as if I ought to be there with you, but I can't. Luck is against me. I should have to walk to Griggsby and go to work for my living, for I should have no home. Don't worry; everything will come out all right. Dad says I may write to you and come home in a year. What do we care what people say so long as we are true to each other, which I will always be. Dad says that Henry is leading me astray. What do you think of that?”
Then he added his signature and his London address.
The girl was game. Her eyes flashed with indignation.
“Never mind,” said she; “my turn will come by and by.”
She said that she had written to Ralph; and I knew, without saying it, that he would receive no letter from her, for I suspected that the cunning old politician would have laid his plans to discourage him with her silence. Two other letters came from Ralph, the last of which complained of what he called “her indifference”; and, although I wrote him, as did she, again and again, I happen to know that Ralph looked in vain for a letter.