“Yes. I intimated it would save time if she left her letters to him unsealed. She seemed quite willing.”
“You read them all, of course, before delivering them?”
“Of course. There was nothing in them except instructions about plowing, fruit picking, and packing, and various bucolic matters.”
“Oh! Nothing to be read between the lines? No cipher? No invisible ink? No tricks of any sort?”
“Not one. I had a detective here. He said there was absolutely no harm in the letters, in Miss Carryl, or in John Deal. I have all the letters if you care to look at them; I always keep the originals and allow only copies to be sent to old man Deal.”
“Let me see those letters,” suggested the Messenger.
The Colonel, who had been sitting on the camp table, got off wearily, rummaged in a dispatch box, and produced three letters, all unsealed.
Two were directed in a delicately flowing, feminine hand to John Deal, Waycross Orchard. The Messenger unfolded the first and read:
Dear Mr. Deal:
Colonel Gay has thought it necessary, for military reasons, to revoke my pass; and I shall, therefore, be obliged hereafter to communicate with you by letter only.