Jud came out of El Mahdi's stall like something out of a hole. He wore a rubber coat that had gone many years about the world, up and down, and finally passed in its decay to Roy.
"You've got that letter?" he said.
I told him that I had the very letter, that it had got wet in the river; I had dried it in the sun, and here it was.
"How did you get it?" he asked.
I told him all the conversation with Marsh, and how I was to give it to Cynthia and the message that went along with it.
The two men came over to me and took the lantern and the letter from my hands, Jud holding the light and Ump turning the envelope around in his fingers, peering curiously. They might have been some guardians of a twilight country examining a mysterious passport signed right but writ in cipher, and one that from some hidden angle might be clear enough.
Presently they handed the letter gravely back to me and set the lantern down in the leaves. Jud was silent, like a man embarrassed, and Ump stood for a moment fingering the buttons on his blue coat.
Finally he spoke. "What's in it?" he said.
"I don't know," I answered. I was sure that the man's face brightened, but it might have been a fancy. Loud in the hooting of a principle, we sometimes change mightily when it comes to breaking that principle bare-handed.
"Are you goin' to look?" he said.