“What can I do?”

“Make him marry her!  Horsewhip him!  Horsewhip him, I say!—­I’d strangle him!”

He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and shook his head.  Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle wisdom, he said, “People of our sort, Willie, can’t do things like that.”

I came near to raving.  I had a wild impulse to strike him in the face.  Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity.  I had a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul fluttered in the dust, before me.  Then, you know, I dismissed him from the case.

“May I look?” I asked.

He held out the envelope reluctantly.

“There it is,” he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger.  “I.A.P.A.M.P.  What can you make of that?”

I took the thing in my hands.  The adhesive stamp customary in those days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of the office of departure and the date.  The impact in this particular case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the letters of the name had left no impression.  I could distinguish—­

  I A P A M P

and very faintly below D.S.O.

I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition.  It was Shaphambury.  The very gaps shaped that to my mind.  Perhaps in a sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting themselves.  It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, either in Norfolk or Suffolk.

“Why!” cried I—­and stopped.

What was the good of telling him?

Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost fearfully, into my face.  “You—­you haven’t got it?” he said.

Shaphambury—­I should remember that.

“You don’t think you got it?” he said.

I handed the envelope back to him.

“For a moment I thought it might be Hampton,” I said.

“Hampton,” he repeated.  “Hampton.  How could you make Hampton?” He turned the envelope about.  “H.A.M.—­why, Willie, you’re a worse hand at the job than me!”

He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this back in his breast pocket.

I did not mean to take any risks in this affair.  I drew a stump of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him and wrote “Shaphambury” very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy shirt cuff.

“Well,” said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable.

I turned to him with some unimportant observation—­I have forgotten what.

I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced.

I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door.

Section 7

It was old Mrs. Verrall.