“Any time I need any assistance, Doughty, in running a meeting over which I am presiding I’ll call you in,” replied the Squire tartly. “Now, what are the facts? Here is a little girl—only a little girl—poor Ben Haskell’s ’Liza, born and brought up in this town. Her mother dead and her father worse than dead. She trying to earn her living honestly, taking care of the children that you’re glad to have out from underfoot, you women. Every day she has been sending them home to you a little better, a little sweeter, a little more honest and self-respecting for having been with her that day—and yet all of you are ready to turn and rend her at the first squawk of——
“Look-a-here, Squire!” Mrs. Dunham was leaning over her desk, her thin hand vibrating at him. “You can go about so fur with me! Do you mean to tell this meetin’ that my husband——”
“Sit down, woman!” the lawyer thundered.
“This ain’t free speech!” clamoured Uncle Appleby. “A moderator ain’t got no license to choke off everybody here.”
With one stride Squire Phin was off the platform. Indignation bristled from his shaggy gray locks and gleamed in his narrowing eyes. As he passed Sylvena Willard she gave him a look that was like a cup of cold water to a man in battle.
He stood among them in the centre aisle.
“Have your moderators to suit yourselves!” he shouted, with a thump of his fist on the desk that made Uncle Paul dodge. “I’m down here now on this floor as a man that won’t see this innocent girl harried nor put out of a place where she is earning her honest living. Who are you, Esther Dunham, to analyse the emotions of the human heart? A self-operating dishwashing machine. What is your old husband that he can understand them, either? A doubled-over grub worm. The two of you hungry for something in your lives, you don’t know what! But you shall not shut your eyes and tear the innocent! Eleven thousand dollars in the banks, eh?” He snarled the words at them. “Rooted by your snouts out of the soil, and you never lifting your eyes to God’s sun and sky and open heart and loving eye and generous impulse. Oh, I know I am harsh and bitter! It is as hard for me to say it as it is for you to hear it. I am bitter toward all of you that live that way, and you in this town have always known my feelings. I dare to tell you the truths about yourselves, and only the sharp-pointed truth will dig into your hides. I dare to say to you, Esther Dunham, that you have maligned a pure and innocent girl who has minded her own business. I dare to tell you that you have trampled upon the torch of love in your own house until you have trod out every spark.
“You wouldn’t let your husband love and do for his own child as he ought. He don’t know what is the matter with him, that’s the trouble. He has been bumping around like an old blind mule. He don’t know his own heart.
“Why, all under God’s heavens he needs is the love of a child—a child, Esther Dunham. He has seen again in this poor girl the image of the one he lost. He has built another altar for his affections, and if it is outside of your own walls, blame yourself, Esther.”
He clapped his finger smartly against his palm.