It was ten days later that, as Lawson hurried down the corridor past the professor's house, the curtains of the library window were stirred slightly and a skinny finger beckoned him.
He was still scornfully angry, but he was anxious; he stopped. The door was set ajar and Susan's face peered through the crack. She was grinning joyously.
"Come inside!" she whispered.
He frowned, but he obeyed her. With one lightning glance about him and one swift memory of the last moment he stood there, he shut the door behind him and waited to hear what the bent and shrivelled old woman had to say.
She drew a paper from the folds of her dress. "Hyar 'tis!" she exclaimed, handling the envelope lovingly. "I cyarnt read, but I'd know dis writin', anywhars; 'tis straight up an' down, an' clear an' hones'!"
Lawson seized it quickly. The envelope was directed to Mr. Robert Holloway. He gave a smothered exclamation. The writing was clear and decided, the postmark, "Keswick." The glance he flashed Susan was scathing, but she stood innocently attentive; her manner might have deceived a man of her own State; it did deceive Lawson with his western ignorance of her race.
"She don't write much, Miss Frances don't." Susan had no word to say of the daily message over the telephone, and Lawson himself never thought of that way of communication.
"She allus was mighty kerles 'bout writin'."
"And she's there, as near as that?"