Here there broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterly like the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell it to you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which was beginning so actively to concern me—the love difficulties of John Mayrant.

It was the letter-carrier.

We had come, from our secluded seats, round a corner, and so by the vestry door and down the walk beside the church, and as I read to myself the initials upon the stones wherewith the walk was paved, I drew near the half-open gateway upon Worship Street. The postman was descending the steps of the post-office opposite. He saw me through the gate and paused. He knew me, too! My face, easily marked out amid the resident faces he was familiar with, had at once caught his attention; very likely he, too, had by now learned that I was interested in the battle of Cowpens; but I did not ask him this. He crossed over and handed me a letter.

"No use," he said most politely, "takin' it away down to Mistress Trevise's when you're right here, sir. Northern mail eight hours late to-day," he added, and bowing, was gone upon his route.

My home letter, from a man, an intimate running mate of mine, soon had my full attention, for on the second page it said:—

"I have just got back from accompanying her to Baltimore. One of us went as far as Washington with her on the train. We gave her a dinner yesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell. She tried our new toboggan fire-escape on a bet. Clean from the attic, my boy. I imagine our native girls will rejoice at her departure. However, nobody's engaged to her, at least nobody here. How many may fancy themselves so elsewhere I can't say. Her name is Hortense Rieppe."

I suppose I must have been silent after finishing this letter.

"No bad news, I trust?" John Mayrant inquired.

I told him no; and presently we had resumed our seats in the quiet charm of the flowers.

I now spoke with an intention. "What a lot you seem to have seen and suffered of the advanced Newport!"

The intention wrought its due and immediate effect. "Yes. There was no choice. I had gone to Newport upon—upon an urgent matter, which took me among those people."

He dwelt upon the pictures that came up in his mind. But he took me away again from the "urgent matter."

"I saw," he resumed more briskly, "fifteen or twenty—most amazing, sir!—young men, some of them not any older than I am, who had so many millions that they could easily—" he paused, casting about for some expression adequate—"could buy Kings Port and put it under a glass case in a museum—my aunts and all—and never know it!" He livened with disrespectful mirth over his own picture of his aunts, purchased by millionaire steel or coal for the purposes of public edification.