"Then why couldn't you have the civility to tell me so at once?"
Miss Jamieson laid aside a little sewing she was engaged on.
"Look here, young man, you don't come bullying and threatening here. I'll have to call the policeman if you do.... I was at the railway station last Friday week, you know."
Frank stood still for one furious instant. Then his heart sank and he went out without a word.
The letters got written at last, late that evening, in the back room of a small lodging-house where he had secured a bed. I have the one he wrote to Jack before me as I write, and I copy it as it stands. It was without address or date.
"Dear Jack,
"I want you to do, something for me. I want you to go to Merefield and see, first, Jenny, and then my father; and tell them quite plainly and simply that I've been in prison for a fortnight. I want Jenny to know first, so that she can think of what to say to my father. The thing I was sent to prison for was that I pleaded guilty to stealing a tin of salmon from a child called Mary Cooper. You can see the account of the case in the County Gazette for last Saturday week, the twenty-seventh. The thing I really did was to take the tin from somebody else I was traveling with. He asked me to.
"Next, I want you to send on any letters that may have come for me to the address I enclose on a separate piece of paper. Please destroy the address at once; but you can show this letter to Jenny and give her my love. You are not to come and see me. If you don't, I'll come and see you soon.
"Things are pretty bad just now, but I'm going to go through with it.