Gentle old Uncle Robert grows fierce. "Ef I had that varmint here, I vum I c'd wring his neck!"
I'm sorry to report that I am not getting on very well with hating the Deacon. (Of course, you've kept the intervening air quivering with your admonitory wirelesses!) He is suffering so hideously, and so determinedly, like a fakir. He feels he must speed the parting soul with the Scriptures and he reads terrifying things about weird beasts,—lion-mouthed leopards with feet like bears—and when he goes downstairs I try—very clumsily, M.D.—to tell Dan'l about the God you know, the one who goes with you into dark alleys and dark hearts. I wish you were here to do it.
Dan'l's faith is indeed the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, but I want to put a warm, tangible lie into his thin little claws before he goes.... Uncle Robert has "been an' went" since I began this letter, and again I must go up to Dan'l and tell him "Not to-day."
I'm a coward, M.D. I've never seen death so close before, and I want to run away. But I won't.
J. V.
P.S. I called on the Low Down Wilkes this morning. Mrs. L.D.W. was wearing my suit over a wrapper of faded red calico, but there was nothing in her manner to indicate that I had ever seen it before.
Saturday.
Here is my story, Michael Daragh, and it is your story, too, for you shamed me into doing it. I am sending it off to the brown-gowned monthly on the stern and rock-bound coast, and this carbon to you. Now will you write and tell me if you like it? Honestly! (I know I said I didn't want you to write me until I had landed a story there, but all this grief and grimness brings a sense of bleak loneliness, and if you think I've won back what I've lost, if you think I've found the vision which will keep my soul from perishing, tell me so.)
J. V.
Sunday Night.