“Yes. What did you do it for? It wasn’t right to try to steal the home from other people.”
“No, it wasn’t; but you see I didn’t know I was stealing. I feel very much mortified that I should have persisted in getting in. It was this way: a man named Muirhead, over across the river, told me that if I were looking for a good place to settle that I could find it here, for there were some persons who had come from Pennsylvania and had put up a cabin and had begun to clear up, but they had given up the place and had gone back home, and I could have the place for the taking. I came over here and explored, and found it just as he said—the house shut up, and things pretty well cleared out, so I took possession.” He paused. “I was misled, because he said it was a man and his daughter, a young slip of a girl who couldn’t stand the rough country.”
“You say Muirhead was the name?”
“Yes.”
Agnes gave her head a defiant shake. “We might have known it,” she said.
“He told me further that he was in a position to know, because the people were relatives of his, and he had a half-interest in the place, but that there was plenty of land nearer home, and he’d not stand at that. I wondered a little, but it seemed all right, as he appeared to know all about it, and referred me to some persons who said he was all right and that he had lived here all his life. I thought myself lucky to get a place where there was already a house built, and did not inquire further. I expected to stay till I should find a piece of land I wanted to buy, and I would have paid Muirhead rent.”
Agnes was silent for a little while, then she said, “Then this Muirhead is not a friend of yours?”
“No, an acquaintance merely. I was directed to him by some one who said he knew all about the country, having been born and brought up near by.”
“So he was. He is my mother’s half-brother, and I think he would do anything to injure us. Every one says he has a right to the property on which he is living, but I don’t think so. He certainly ought not to have more than half, yet he takes it all, and I know my grandfather would have given my mother a share of whatever he had. But there is no use trying to fight it. I am only a girl, and father is not in a state to help, so there is no one to do anything about it, but I feel sure that Humphrey Muirhead is trying to get us from the neighborhood, and he’ll do everything against us, and that is why he sent you here.”
“I see,” said Parker Willett, smiling, “though I think it was decidedly against me, too, as it turned out.”