THERE was a galvanized sheet-iron mail-box near the gate of the tannery, and in it once a day a carrier passing on horseback placed the letters and papers which came for the family. Little Jack loved to take the key and open the box after the carrier had passed and bring the contents to the house and distribute it to the various recipients. Hoag sat on the veranda one afternoon waiting for Jack, who had just gone to the box, having heard the carrier's whistle. Presently the boy came in at the gate holding several letters in his hands, and he brought them to his father.

“Here's one without a stamp,” Jack smiled. “That's funny; I thought all U. S. letters had to have stamps on them.”

Hoag saw only that particular envelope in the lot which was laid on his knee.

“It must have been an accident,” he muttered. “The stamp may have dropped off.”

“More likely that somebody passed along, and put the letter into the box,” Jack's inventive mind suggested.

Hoag made no reply. He had already surmised that this might be the case. There was a title prefixed to his name which he had never seen written before, and it held his eyes like the charm of a deadly reptile.

“Captain Jimmy Hoag,” was the superscription in its entirety, and the recipient remembered having seen the scrawling script before. Automatically he singled out the letters for Paul and for Ethel and her mother, and sent Jack to deliver them.

When his son had disappeared Hoag rose and crept stealthily back to his room. Why he did so he could not have explained, but he even locked himself in, turning the key as noiselessly as a burglar might have done in the stillness of night. He laid the envelope on the bed and for a moment stood over it, staring down on it with desperate eyes. Then, with quivering, inert fingers he opened it and spread out the inclosed sheet. It bore the same skull and crossbones as the former warning, and beneath was written:

The day and the hour is close at hand. Keep your eye on the clock. We will do the rest.

his (Blak X Buck) mark.

That was all. Hoag took it to the fireplace, struck a match, and was about to ignite the paper, but refrained. Extinguishing the match, he rested a quivering elbow on the mantelpiece, and reflected. What ought he to do with the paper? If it were found on his dead body it would explain things not now generally known. Dead body! How could he think of his dead body? His body, white, cold, and lifeless, perhaps with a stare of terror in the eyes! Why, he had never even thought of himself as being like that, and yet what could prevent it now? What?

Some one—Ethel or her mother—was playing the piano in the parlor. Aunt Dilly was heard singing while at work behind the house. Jack ran through the hall, making a healthy boy's usual clatter, and his father heard him merrily calling across the lawn to Paul Rundel that he had left a letter for him on his table.

All this was maddening. It represented life in its full swing and ardor, while here was something as grim and pitilessly exultant as hell itself could devise. Hoag folded the paper in his bloodless hands and sank upon the edge of his bed. He had used his brain shrewdly and skilfully hitherto, and in what way could he make it serve him now? Something must be done, but what? He could not appeal to the law, for he had made his own laws, and they were inadequate. He could not evoke the aid of friends, for they—such as they were—had left him like stampeded cattle, hoping that by his death the wrath of the hidden avenger might be appeased. He could flee and leave all his possessions to others, but something told him that he would be pursued.

When the dusk was falling he went out on the lawn. Ethel and Paul were seated on a rustic bench near the summer-house, and he avoided them. Seeing Mrs. Mayfield at the gate, he turned round behind the house to keep from meeting and exchanging platitudes with her. In the back yard he pottered about mechanically, inspecting his beehives, his chicken-house and dog-kennel, receptive of only one thought. He wondered if he were really losing his mental balance, else why should he be so devoid of resources? He now realized the terrible power embodied in the gruesome warnings his brain had fashioned and circulated among a simple-minded, superstitious people. What he was now facing they had long cowered under. The thought of prayer, as a last resort, flashed into his mind, but he promptly told himself that only fools prayed. Biblical quotations flocked about him as if from his far-off childhood. And such quotations as they were!

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” These things seemed to be borne to him on the breeze that swept down from the beetling rocks of the mountains which leaned against the star-studded sky.

After an all but sleepless night, Hoag ate breakfast with the family the next morning, and announced his intention of running down to Atlanta for a day or so on business. Paul wanted to ask some questions pertaining to his work, but Hoag swept them aside with a turgid wave of the hand.

“Run it yourself; it will be all right,” he said. “Your judgment is as good as mine. I don't feel exactly well here lately. I have headaches that I didn't use to have, an' I think I'll talk to a doctor down thar. I don't know; I say maybe I will.”

Riding to town, he left his horse at Trawley's stable, and going to the railway station below the Square he strolled about on the platform. A locomotive's whistle several miles up the valley announced that the train was on time. Approaching the window of the ticket-office, which was within the little waiting-room, he found the opening quite filled by a broad-brimmed farmer's hat, a pair of heavy shoulders on a long body, supported by a pair of gaunt jeans-clothed legs.

“Yes, I'm off for Texas.” He recognized Purvynes's voice in cheerful conversation with the agent. “My brother says I ought to come. He's got a good thing for me out thar—land's as black as a hat, an' as rich as a stable-lot a hundred year old. He was so set on havin' me that he lent me the money to go on. So long! Good luck to you!”

The head was withdrawn from the window; a pair of brown hands were awkwardly folding a long green emigrant's ticket, and Purvynes suddenly saw the man behind him.

“Hello, you off?” Hoag hastily summoned a casual tone.

The start, the dogged lowering of the head, the vanishing of Purvynes's smile, were successive blows to the shrinking consciousness of the inquirer.

“Yes, I'm off.” Purvynes's eyes were now shifting restlessly. Then he lowered his voice, and a touch of malice crept into it as he added: “You see, I didn't have to do it on your money, nuther, an' you bet I'm glad. It's tainted if ever cash was, an' I want to shake every grain o' Georgia dust off my feet, anyway.”

“I'm goin' as far as Atlanta,” Hoag said, tentatively. “I may see you on the train.”

“My ticket's second class.” Purvynes shrugged his shoulders. “I'll have to ride in the emigrant-car, next to the engine. I reckon we—we'd better stay apart, Jim, anyhow. I want it that way,” he added, in a low, firm tone, and with smoldering fires in his eyes which seemed about to burst into flame.

“All right, all right!” Hoag hastily acquiesced. “You know best,” and he turned to the window and bought his ticket. The agent made a courteous remark about the weather and the crops, and in some fashion Hoag responded, but his thoughts were far away.

He found himself almost alone, in the smoking-car. He took a cigar from his pocket, lighted it, and, raising the window, blew the smoke outside. A baggage-truck was being trundled by. He could have put out his hand and touched the heap of trunks and bags with which it was laden. A burly negro was pushing it along. Raising his eyes suddenly, he saw Hoag, and there was no mistaking the startled look beneath the lines of his swarthy face. Another blow had been received. Hoag turned from the window. The train started on, slowly at first, and, going faster and faster, soon was passing through Hoag's property. Never on any other occasion had he failed to survey these possessions with pride and interest. The feeling had died within him. A drab disenchantment seemed to have fallen upon every visible object. All he owned—the things which had once been as his life's blood—had dwindled till they amounted to no more than the broken toys of babyhood.

Beyond his fertile lands and the roofs of his buildings rose a red-soiled hill which was the property of the village. Hoag turned his head to look at it. He shuddered. Tall white shafts shone in the full yellow light. One, distinctly visible, marked the grave of his wife, on which Hoag had spared no expense. There was room for another shaft close beside it. Under it a murdered man would lie. That was inevitable unless something was done—and what could be done? “Death, death, death!” The smooth, flanged wheels seemed to grind the words into the steel rails. They were written on the blue sky along the earth-rimmed horizon. They were whispered from the lowest depths of himself. His blood crept, cold and sluggish, through his veins. A chill seemed to have attacked his feet and ankles and was gradually creeping upward. He remembered that this was said to be the sensation of dying, and he stood up and stamped his feet in vigorous, rebellious terror.