"Yours to command,
"JAKE HARRIS."
"P.S.—Mandy Ann, you 'members her, what took care of lil chile. She's a grown woman now in course, an' has ten chillen, 'sides Ted. You 'members Ted, on de 'Hatty.' No 'count at all; but Mandy Ann, wall, she's a whopper, an' when she hears de nuse, she 'most had de pow'. She sen's her regrets, an' would come, too, if she hadn't so many moufs to feed, an' Ted doin' nothin' but playin' gemman.
"Onc't mo', yours,
"JAKE."
To describe the Colonel's state of mind as he read this letter is impossible. He forgot the pain in his leg and knee in the greater sensation of the cold, prickly feeling which ran through his veins, making his fingers feel like sticks, and powerless to hold the letter, which dropped to the floor. With every year he had hugged closer and closer the secret of his life, becoming more and more morbid and more fearful, lest in some way his connection with the palmetto clearing should be known and he fall from the high pedestal on which he had stood so long, and from which his fall would be greater because he had been there so long. It would all be right after he was dead. He had seen to that, and didn't care what the world would say when he was not alive to hear it. But he was very much alive now, and his sin bade fair to find him out.
"Just as I feared when that rector told me who his father was," he thought, cursing the chance which had sent the Rev. Arthur Mason to Crompton,—cursing the Rev. Charles for giving information to Jake,—and cursing Jake for the letter, which he spurned with his well foot, as it lay on the floor. He had hoped the negro might be dead, as he had heard nothing from him in a long time; and here he was, alive and waiting for a word to come. "If he waits for that he will wait to all eternity," he said to himself. "I shall write and make it worth his while to stay where he is. He knows too much of Amy's birth and her mother's death to be trusted here. Uncertainty is better than the truth. I have made matters right for Amy, and confessed everything. They'll find it when I'm gone, and can wag their tongues all they please. It won't hurt me then, but while I live I'll keep up the farce. It might have been better to have told the truth at first, but I didn't, and it's too late now. Who in thunder is that knocking at the door? Not Amy, I hope,—and I can't reach that letter," he continued, as there came a low rap at the door.
"Come in!" he called, when it was repeated, and Cora, the housemaid, entered.
She had been in the family but a few days and did not yet understand her duties with regard to the Colonel, and know that she was not to trouble him. Tim Biggs had been commissioned by Eloise to take her note to Mrs. Amy, together with the chairs.
"You can't carry both at one time, so take the sea this morning, and the wheel this afternoon," Mrs. Biggs said, just as Tom Walker appeared.
He had been to the house two or three times since the Rummage, ostensibly to ask when Eloise was going to commence her duties as teacher, but really to see her and hear her pleasant "Good-morning, Thomas, I am glad to see you."
Whatever Mrs. Biggs knew was soon known to half of District No. 5, and the news that Eloise was going to California had reached Tom, and brought him to inquire if it were true.