spent most of his money in carousing with John Dorsey and her father.  Gladys had had a baby a few months after her marriage, and she had had two more since.  The last time Maria had been in Amity was soon after Gladys’s first baby was born.  Maria had met her one day carrying the little thing swathed in an old shawl, with a pitiful attempt of finery in a white lace bonnet cocked sidewise on its little head, which waggled over Gladys’s thin shoulder.  Gladys, when she saw Maria, had colored and nodded, and almost run past her without a word.

It was just before the beginning of Evelyn’s last year at school when Maria received a letter from Gladys’s mother.  It was a curious composition.  Mrs. Mann had never possessed any receptivity for education.  The very chirography gave evidence of a rude, almost uncivilized mind.  Maria got it one night during the last of August.  She had gone to the post-office for the last mail, and all the time there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much import to her.  The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side seemed to cry out to her as she passed them.  They seemed no longer mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future, which she could almost interpret.

“I wonder what is going to happen?” she thought.  “Something is going to happen.”  She was glad that Evelyn was not with her, as usual, but had gone for a drive with a young friend who had a pony-carriage.  She felt that she could not have borne her sister’s curious glances at the letter which she was sure would be in the post-office box.  It was there when she entered the dirty little place.  She saw one letter slanted across the dusty glass of the box.  It was not a lock box, and she had to ask the postmaster for the letter.

“Number twenty-four, please,” she said.

The postmaster was both bungling and curious.  He was a long time finding the box, then in giving her the letter.  Maria felt dizzy.  When at last he handed it to her with an inquisitive glance, she almost ran out of the office.  When she was out-doors she glanced at the post-mark and saw it was Edgham.  When she came to a lonely place in the road, when she was walking between stone-walls overgrown with poison-ivy, and meadowsweet, and hardhack, and golden-rod, she opened the letter.  Just as she opened it she heard the sweet call of a robin in the field on her left, and the low of a cow looking anxiously over her bars.

The letter was written on soiled paper smelling strongly of tobacco, and it enclosed another smaller, sealed envelop.  Maria read: 

“Deer Miss,—­I now tak my pen in hand to let you no that Gladys she is ded.  She had a little boy bon, and he and she both died.  Gladys she had been coffin for some time befoar, and jest befor she was took sick, she give me this letter, and sed for me to send it to you if ennything happened to her.

  “Excuse hast and a bad pen.  Mrs. Mann.”