"Because you are my guardian. Between us is an instinct different from love, but strong; I feel it. I lean towards you, but not on you. What is it?"
"O Dios!" lisped Van Dorn, his blush suspended and his warm blue eyes fascinated by her. "Is this a child or Echo?"
"Tell me of my father's crime. I want Levin to know the wretched thing he has affection for."
"Ayme! ah! Well, listen, young lovers; and see what grisly things walk in these pines! There was a man named Brereton; they call him Bruington here, where their noses are twisted and their chins weak. He came from old Lewes, off to the east by Cape Henlopen, and of a stout family, in which was a grain of evil ever smoking through the blood. Do you sometimes feel it, Hulda?"
"No, not evil like that."
"He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and held the iron while the master struck. One day a man came in the shop, whose horse had thrown a shoe, to have a shoeing, and, when he paid for it, he took a handful of money from his pocket, and one piece—a dollar—fell in the soft soot of the shop, unperceived but by the boy: chis! he covered it with his foot."
Van Dorn's whip-lash firmly covered a huge fly on the horse's ear, and laid it dead.
"When the man departed, the boy raised his foot and uncovered the dollar; his master said, 'Smart boy!' They divided the stolen dollar."
"Jimmy Phœbus says the fust step is half of a journey," Levin noted.
"The blacksmith's boy looked avariciously on travellers ever after, who might possess a dollar. He took the empty shop of Patty Cannon's first husband, years after that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises, and chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Naturally he kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child, Patty's daughter became Brereton's wife, bestowed by the fond, appreciative mother. Master Levin, if you fall into his path, Brereton's daughter may be bestowed on you. Hola! behold her in Hulda."