A few steps from our front door I came upon John Mayrant, and saw at once too plainly that no ease had come to his spirit during the hours since the bridge.  He was just emerging from an adjacent house.

“And have you resigned?” I asked him.

“Yes.  That’s done.  You haven’t seen Miss Rieppe this morning?”

“Why, she’s surely not boarding with Mrs. Trevise?”

“No; stopping here with her old friend, Mrs. Cornerly.”  He indicated the door he had come from.  “Of course, you wouldn’t be likely to see her pass!” And with that he was gone.

That he was greatly stirred up by something there could be no doubt; never before had I seen him so abrupt; it seemed clear that anger had taken the place of despondency, or whatever had been his previous mood; and by the time I reached the post-office I had already imagined and dismissed the absurd theory that John was jealous of Charley, had resigned from the Custom House as a first step toward breaking his engagement, and had rung Mrs. Cornerly’s bell at this early hour with the purpose of informing his lady-love that all was over between them.  Jealousy would not be likely to produce this set of manifestations in young, foolish John; and I may say here at once, what I somewhat later learned, that the boy had come with precisely the opposite purpose, namely, to repeat and reenforce his steadfast constancy, and that it was something far removed from jealousy which had spurred him to this.

I found the girl behind the counter at her post, grateful to me for coming to ask how she was after the shock of yesterday, but unwilling to speak of it at all; all which she expressed by her charming manner, and by the other subjects she chose for conversation, and especially by the way in which she held out her hand when I took my leave.

Near the post-office I was hailed by Beverly Rodgers, who proclaimed to me at once a comic but genuine distress.  He had already walked, he said (and it was but half-past nine o’clock, as he bitterly bade me observe on the church dial), more miles in search of a drink than his unarithmetical brain had the skill to compute.  And he confounded such a town heartily; he should return as soon as possible to Charley’s yacht, where there was civilization, and where he had spent the night.  During his search he had at length come to a door of promising appearance, and gone in there, and they had explained to him that it was a dispensary.  A beastly arrangement.  What was the name of the razor-back hog they said had invented it?  And what did you do for a drink in this confounded water-hole?

He would find it no water-hole, I told him; but there were methods which a stranger upon his first morning could scarce be expected to grasp.  “I could direct you to a Dutchman,” I said, “but you’re too well dressed to win his confidence at once.”

“Well, old man,” began Beverly, “I don’t speak Dutch, but give me a crack at the confidence.”