"Well, you do look as if you wa'n't good for nothing but to be taken care of," said Barby. "I wouldn't have riz you up if it hadn't been just tea-time, and I knowed you couldn't stay quiet much longer;" and, with a look which explained her tactics, she put into Fleda's hand a letter, directed to her aunt.
"Philetus give it to me," she said, without a glance at Fleda's face; "he said it was give to him by a spry little shaver, who wa'n't a mind to tell nothin' about himself."
"Thank you, Barby!" was Fleda's most grateful return, and summoning her aunt up stairs, she took her into her own room, and locked the door before she gave her the letter, which Barby's shrewdness and delicacy had taken such care should not reach its owner in a wrong way. Fleda watched her as her eye ran over the paper, and caught it as it fell from her fingers.
"My dear wife,
"That villain Thorn has got a handle of me which he will not fail to use you know it all, I suppose, by this time. It is true that in an evil hour, long ago, when greatly pressed, I did what I thought I should surely undo in a few days. The time never came I don't know why he has let it lie so long, but he has taken it up now, and he will push it to the extreme. There is but one thing left for me I shall not see you again. The rascal would never let me rest, I know, in any spot that calls itself American ground.
"You will do better without me than with me.
"R. R."
Fleda mused over the letter for several minutes, and then touched her aunt, who had fallen on a chair, with her head sunk in her hands.
"What does he mean?" said Mrs. Rossitur, looking up with a perfectly colourless face.
"To leave the country."