The other two came together, in the third week of October, on a morning of frost when the river was smoking and the bell had just struck nine. They had travelled in the same mail-bag from Rothbury; the sealing wax on both was the same dark red, though only one bore the raven.
The first was in a hand she knew from a single word: a low black scrawl that leaned backward, the letters crowding and colliding, the ink blotted in three places and a word struck out in two. It covered rather less than one side of the sheet.
"Carrowby. Oct. 14th.
"Miss Bramley,
"This is my own hand as you see. I have been at it since Michaelmas and this is the fourth try. The others were worse.
"The heron is still at the ford. The bell is still flat. I have let Low Farm to a man from Coquetdale and paid off the worst of the Newcastle bills, and Ackroyd's money has gone into the roof as his daughter said it should. She was right about the lead. She is right about most things. I wrote and told her so and she sent back two lines to say she knew.
"I do not know how to write to you. I find I have nothing to say that is not about drains. Anne says that is because I am a plain man and I should not be ashamed of it. I am not ashamed of it but I would have liked to be someone else for you, once. That is the truth. It is all I have.
"I am going to walk to Durham in November, or ride, the hand is better on a horse. If I come to the North Bailey on a Sunday and stand on the bridge below the castle, will you come and tell me whether I am still a disappointment. You need not answer this. You may just come or not come.
"I remain your servant (that is not manners),
"Carrowby"
She read it twice, and then a third time, slowly, as Dorothea used to read: a word at a time, like a lock with the wrong key.