"Oh, sugar, Heppy!" ejaculated Tobias. "You're the beatin'est for seining up trouble and seeing the blackest side of things. Enough to give a man the fantods, you are! Hello! Here's the mail packet heaving into sight."
A bony horse with a head so long that he might easily eat his oats out of a flour barrel, appeared from around the turn in the Lower Trillion road. He drew behind him a buckboard which sagged under the weight of Amos Pickering, the rural mail carrier.
"Maybe he's got a letter for us," suggested Miss Heppy with some eagerness. "You go see, Tobias."
The lightkeeper dropped his spade and made a speaking trumpet of his hands. "Ahoy! Ahoy, Amos! What's the good word?"
The mail carrier waved an answering hand before diving into the sack at his feet and bringing to light, as Tobias strode down to the roadside, a letter and a paper.
"Wal, now," said the lightkeeper, "that's what ye might call a heavy haul for us. I cal'late, Amos, if all your customers got as few parcels o' mail as what me and Heppy does, you'd purt' near go out o' business."
"It's got a black border onto it, Tobias," said the mail carrier, voicing the curiosity that ate like acid on his mind. "And it's postmarked at Batten. Ain't that where your Uncle Jethro lives?"
"Sure enough!" agreed the lightkeeper. "But 'tain't his hand o' write—nossir!"
"Be you sure?"
"Surest thing you know, Amos. 'Cause why? Cap'n Jethro Potts never learned to more than make his mark—if that much."