The Patriarch’s fine old face was aglow with pleasure as he finally understood.  Letter writing was beyond him now, a thing of the past, so upon the slate he scrawled: 

“You write.”

Madison shook his head; and again with gentle patience explained that perhaps it would be better if the letter came from some one holding an official position in the village, rather than from one who, even in an abstract way, would be unknown to her—­the postmaster, for instance.

And the Patriarch, patting Madison’s sleeve gratefully, agreed.

Out in the garden behind the cottage, where for the first time in sixty seasons the work must be done by other hands, Hiram Higgins, the volunteer for the moment, was busy at his “spell.”

Madison stepped to the door and called him in.

“Mr. Higgins,” he said, “the Patriarch has just told me that he has a grand-niece living in New York, and he wants you to write to her and ask her to come to him.”

“Be that so!” exclaimed Mr. Higgins, gazing earnestly at the Patriarch.  “Well, ’tain’t no surprise to me—­always calc’lated he must have folks somewheres.  An’ I’m right glad now he needs ’em he’s made up his mind to have ’em come.  Wants me to write, does he?”

“He can’t write any more himself,” said Madison.  “He seems to think that you, as the postmaster, as well as the town police official, are the proper person to do it—­and I quite agree with him.”

“So I be,” declared Mr. Higgins importantly.  “I’ll write it on the town paper, an’ comin’ from the postmaster there won’t be no doubt in her mind that it’s any of them bunco games or the lurin’ of young women away such as I’ve read about, for I reckon perhaps she ain’t never heerd of him before—­never knew him to write a letter, an’ I calc’late to see most everything that goes out.”

Mr. Higgins picked up the slate and wrote the word “grand-niece?” upon it in enormous characters; then, amplifying his interrogation by many gestures of his hands, deft from long practice, he held the slate up to the Patriarch.

The Patriarch nodded, and Hiram Higgins nodded back encouragingly.

“Where be her address?” Mr. Higgins inquired of Madison.

Madison stepped to the bookshelves out of view of the Patriarch around the fireplace, but in full view of Mr. Higgins, and, reaching down the Bible from the topmost shelf, extracted from inside its cover the aged, yellow slip of paper that he had deposited there when he had entered the cottage that morning, and on which was inscribed Helena’s name and address in a stiff, old-fashioned, angular hand resembling the Patriarch’s—­an effect that Madison had stayed up half the night to produce.

“I guess this must be it,” he said.  “He said it was here—­we’ll make sure though”—­and he handed it to the Patriarch.

Long and painfully the Patriarch studied it, anxiously deciphering the words that he had never seen before, anxious to know all and whatever this might tell him about his niece—­then again he nodded his head and expressed his gratitude by, patting Madison’s sleeve.