“Wake up, ‘Caje! Wake up, my man! Can’t you see now what the hankering in your heart meant?”
The old farmer tucked his head between his arms on the desk and wept weakly. His wife sat staring straight before her.
“Poor little girl!” softly said the Squire. He tiptoed back down the aisle and smoothed the little teacher’s curls. “Poor little girl! You have been ground between two hard millstones—and none of you knew, none of you knew.”
He gazed long, silently and rebukingly over the assemblage. The people shifted uneasily, shuttling their eyes from him to the floor.
“Now, who wants to stand forth as persecutor of this abused child?” he demanded, his hand protectingly on her head.
No one stirred or spoke.
In the silence he walked slowly up the aisle and bent down over the wife who stood staring into vacancy.
“Esther!” he said softly, and when she looked up at him after a time he gazed at her with his eyes softening.
“Poor old mother!” He said it with infinite tenderness. He waited awhile.
“It has been a bitter, cruel lesson that I have read to you,” he went on. “I am a harsh old tyrant when my feelings are stirred. But I would have defended just as stoutly your own little girl if she were here alone and you were sleeping over yonder there on the hill where her mother is.”