when his spirits sank lowest, he actually harbored the fear that her affection might already have returned to Wambush.  He recalled something he had once heard that a woman would love a man who was unfortunate more surely than one who was not, and this thought almost drove him mad with jealousy, for was she not likely, through pity, to send her heart after the exile?  Now and then, in passing the hotel, he caught a glimpse of Harriet on the veranda or at the window, but she always turned away, as if she wished to avoid meeting him, and this pained him, too, for she had become his very life, and such cold encounters were like permanent steps towards losing her forever, which, somehow, had never quite shaped itself into a possibility in his mind.

It was a warm day in the middle of November, Westerfelt and Washburn stood at the stable waiting for the hack, which, once a day, brought the mail and passengers from Darley.  It had come down the winding red clay road and stopped at the hotel before going on to the stable.

“I see a woman on the back seat,” remarked Washburn.  “Wonder why she didn’t git out at the hotel.”

In a moment the hack was in front of the stable, and Budd Ridly, the driver, had sprung down and was helping a woman out on the opposite side.  When she had secured her shawl and little carpet-bag, she walked round the hack and came towards Westerfelt.

It was Sue Dawson.  She wore the same black cotton bonnet and gown, now faded and soiled, that she had worn at her daughter’s funeral.

“Howdy’ do?” she said, giving him the ends of her fingers, and resting her carpet-bag on her hip.  “I ’lowed you’d be glad to see me.”  There was a malicious gleam in her little blue eyes, and her withered face was hard and pale and full of desperate purpose.

“How do you do?” he replied.

She smiled as she slowly scrutinized him.

“Well, you don’t look as if you wus livin’ on a bed of ease exactly,” she said, in a tone of satisfaction; “you’ve been handled purty rough, I reckon, fer a dandified feller like you, but—­” She stopped suddenly and glanced at Washburn, who was staring at her in surprise, then went on:  “Budd Ridly couldn’t change a five-dollar bill, an’ he ’lowed I might settle my fare with the proprietor uv the shebang.  Don’t blame Budd; I tol’ ‘im I wus well acquainted with the new stableman; an’ I am, I reckon, ef anybody is.  I had business over heer,” she went on, as she got out her old-fashioned pocket-book and fumbled it with trembling fingers.  “I couldn’t attend to it by writin’; some’n’s gone wrong with the mails; it looks like I cayn’t git no answers to the letters I write.”

Washburn took the money and went into the office for the change.

“I didn’t see what good it would do to write, Mrs. Dawson,” said Westerfelt; “maybe it was wrong for me not to, but I’ve had a lot to bear; and you—­”