Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the letter quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs for the night.

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

“Mr. Amblecrom brought it,” she replied.

“Who’s he?”

“The postmaster.  He often brings the letters that come on the late mail.  He knows I ain’t anybody to send.  He brought yours about your coming.  He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat with you.”

“I remember him,” Rebecca replied shortly.  “There’s bad news in this letter.”

Mrs. Dent’s face took on an expression of serious inquiry.

“Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs—­they were always dangerous—­and she’s broken her hip, and I’ve got to take the first train home to-morrow.”

“You don’t say so.  I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“No, you ain’t sorry!” said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped.  “You’re glad.  I don’t know why, but you’re glad.  You’ve wanted to get rid of me for some reason ever since I came.  I don’t know why.  You’re a strange woman.  Now you’ve got your way, and I hope you’re satisfied.”

“How you talk.”

Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light in her eyes.

“I talk the way it is.  Well, I’m going to-morrow morning, and I want you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to me.  Don’t you wait for anything.  You pack what clothes she’s got, and don’t wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket.  I’ll leave the money, and you send her along.  She don’t have to change cars.  You start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!”

“Very well,” replied the other woman.  She had an expression of covert amusement.

“Mind you do it.”

“Very well, Rebecca.”

Rebecca started on her journey the next morning.  When she arrived, two days later, she found her cousin in perfect health.  She found, moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the cousin’s letter.  Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the next morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much for her.  She was not able to move from her bed.  She had a species of low fever induced by anxiety and fatigue.  But she could write, and she did, to the Slocums, and she received no answer.  She also wrote to Mrs. Dent; she even sent numerous telegrams, with no response.  Finally she wrote to the postmaster, and an answer arrived by the first possible mail.  The letter was short, curt, and to the purpose.  Mr. Amblecrom, the postmaster, was a man of few words, and especially wary as to his expressions in a letter.

“Dear madam,” he wrote, “your favour rec’ed.  No Slocums in Ford’s Village.  All dead.  Addie ten years ago, her mother two years later, her father five.  House vacant.  Mrs. John Dent said to have neglected stepdaughter.  Girl was sick.  Medicine not given.  Talk of taking action.  Not enough evidence.  House said to be haunted.  Strange sights and sounds.  Your niece, Agnes Dent, died a year ago, about this time.