“Well, you are kindly welcome anyway.”
“I went to see Squire Holt this morning. No—he is not dying, though it cannot be long now.”
“Ay! ay! Well, he is an old man, and he is ending a useful life.”
He spoke dreamily in his utter weariness, looking away over the fields to the sunshiny hills beyond.
“I have something to give you, Mr Fleming,” said the minister gently, “something which Miss Holt found among her father’s papers.”
“Well, well,” said the old man, waiting quietly, almost indifferently, for what might be said.
“It is a letter, written long ago by one dead and gone, who was very dear to you.”
A change came over her grandfather’s face, but whether it was because of what Mr Maxwell had said, or because he saw Jacob Holt standing before him, and quite near him, Katie could not tell. Jacob moistened his dry lips, and tried twice to speak before a sound came.
“It is a letter—and before you read it—I beg you to forgive me for any harm I may ever have done—to you or yours.”
The little Flemings had gathered about the door, but their mother drew them away into the house. Katie kept her place by her grandfather, and so did Davie, but he was out of sight in the porch. Mr Fleming rose, and stood face to face with his enemy; but when he spoke it was to Mr Maxwell that he turned.