“Mrs. Katie Flannigan.

“N.B.  I ‘m lavin town terday so it won’t be no use lookin’ fer me.”

On inquiry uncle Wellington learned from the boy that shortly after his departure in the morning a white man had appeared on the scene, followed a little later by a moving-van, into which the furniture had been loaded and carried away.  Mrs. Braboy, clad in her best clothes, had locked the door, and gone away with the strange white man.

The news was soon noised about the street.  Wellington swapped his fish for supper and a bed at a neighbor’s, and during the evening learned from several sources that the strange white man had been at his house the afternoon of the day before.  His neighbors intimated that they thought Mrs. Braboy’s departure a good riddance of bad rubbish, and Wellington did not dispute the proposition.

Thus ended the second chapter of Wellington’s matrimonial experiences.  His wife’s departure had been the one thing needful to convince him, beyond a doubt, that he had been a great fool.  Remorse and homesickness forced him to the further conclusion that he had been knave as well as fool, and had treated aunt Milly shamefully.  He was not altogether a bad old man, though very weak and erring, and his better nature now gained the ascendency.  Of course his disappointment had a great deal to do with his remorse; most people do not perceive the hideousness of sin until they begin to reap its consequences.  Instead of the beautiful Northern life he had dreamed of, he found himself stranded, penniless, in a strange land, among people whose sympathy he had forfeited, with no one to lean upon, and no refuge from the storms of life.  His outlook was very dark, and there sprang up within him a wild longing to get back to North Carolina,—­back to the little whitewashed cabin, shaded with china and mulberry trees; back to the wood-pile and the garden; back to the old cronies with whom he had swapped lies and tobacco for so many years.  He longed to kiss the rod of aunt Milly’s domination.  He had purchased his liberty at too great a price.

The next day he disappeared from Groveland.  He had announced his departure only to Mr. Johnson, who sent his love to his relations in Patesville.

It would be painful to record in detail the return journey of uncle Wellington—­Mr. Braboy no longer—­to his native town; how many weary miles he walked; how many times he risked his life on railroad tracks and between freight cars; how he depended for sustenance on the grudging hand of back-door charity.  Nor would it be profitable or delicate to mention any slight deviations from the path of rectitude, as judged by conventional standards, to which he may occasionally have been driven by a too insistent hunger; or to refer in the remotest degree to a compulsory sojourn of thirty days in a city where he had no references, and could show no visible means of support.  True charity will let these purely personal matters remain locked in the bosom of him who suffered them.