She shook her head and smote her palms together.
"Forgeries one and all. I would not believe you on your oath, unless the grave yawned, and Leighton Dane—dead six years—came back as witness in your favor."
"'He was the handsome Spanish-looking man' Delia Brown told me stole my wife and child and disappeared suddenly—going to Florida or Cuba to grow bananas—when you heard I was coming to Thompsonville?"
"He was a good old man, my father's best friend, who took his place as teamster—and when I was literally driven out of the cabin one rainy night by my stepmother, he was the only human being who believed I was not vile. He pitied me and carried me in one of the Government wagons to Thompsonville, and paid my board until I was able to earn my bread by helping Delia Brown wash and iron. His term was expiring soon, and when he started back to his home in California, he came by to see if I needed anything.
"Finding I was ill in body, distracted in mind, desperate, because I knew then I was utterly deserted, and had no hope of help, he offered to carry me West and protect me on account of his friendship for my father. Oh, bless him—for ever and ever! He made an humble little home for us, and shielded and respected me, and pitied and believed in me with all the strength of his great, true heart, and was a second and a much better father to me in my shameful desolation and helplessness. He adopted me and my baby, and when he died he left his small savings to us; and so I named my outcast little one Leighton Dane for the one loyal friend who helped me to feed and clothe him when his own father rejected and abandoned him. I had no proof except the certificate you made me swear I would conceal for two years, and your ally, the devil, worked well for you when the mice nesting in my trunk cut it into shreds while I was ill. The chaplain and Ransom Hill were dead; I had none to speak for me; but Mr. Dane believed my words, and he put his big hand on my head and comforted me.
"'Poor little girl, don't worry; just be easy in your mind, for I know you are telling the truth. I know you are good as your own baby, and if every mouth in America swore against you I would trust you as I always trusted my own mother.'"
A mist clouded her eyes, as dew softens the tint of a violet, but she clenched her hands, and bit her lip hard to still its tremor, adding with sullen emphasis:
"In all these black years the one star of comfort I can ever see shines in the assurance that the only truly good man I have found, who knew me well, respected and trusted me as he did his dead mother."
"You never saw or heard of the advertisements I published in various papers, asking you to inform me where I could find you?"
The contempt in her ringing answer stung him like a whip-lash.