Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing
so much that he knew its contents.
'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I
can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can,' he said, as he put it
again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of
its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her.
'I'll see how I feel when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted
from his horse before the door of the post-office.
The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for
it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the
wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his
riding-whip.
'I must decide soon,' he thought, when a voice not far from him caught
his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in,
portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days
of the 'Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his
former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond
ring. To him Peterkin was saying:
'There, that's him--that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town--lives
in that handsome place I was telling you about.
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