Before very long they overtook Miles Jackson, jogging along on a little bay horse.
Miles was a black man, very sober and sedate who for years had carried the mail twice a week from a station farther up the railroad to the village.

But he was not a mail-carrier now.

His employer, a white man, who had the contract for carrying the mails, had also gone into another business which involved letter-carrying.
A few miles back from the village of Akeville, where the Loudons lived, was a mica mine, which had recently been bought, and was now worked by a company from the North.

This mica (the semi-transparent substance that is set into stove doors) proved to be very plentiful and valuable, and the company had a great deal of business on their hands.

It was frequently necessary to send messages and letters to the North, and these were always carried over to the station on the other side of Crooked Creek, where there was a daily mail and a telegraph office.