On the contrary, it was mild and gentle as a woman's, while there was something in his pleasant blue eyes which would prompt an entire stranger to trust him at once. He had seen much of the world, and of what is called best society, and his manners were polished and pleasing. Still there was nothing ostentatious about him, no consciousness of superiority, and when Deacon Marshall, pointing to Walter, said to him, "This is Seth's child," he took the boy's hand in his own, and for a moment, stood gazing down into the frank, open face, then pushing the brown hair from off the forehead, he said:
"You look as your father did, when we were boys together, and he was the dearest friend I knew."
"What made you turn against him then?" trembled on Walter's lips, but the words were not uttered, for Mr. Graham's manner had disarmed him of all animosity, and he said instead:
"I hope I may be as good and true a man as I believe him to have been."
For a moment longer Mr. Graham held the hand in his, while he looked admiringly at the boy, who had paid this tribute to one whom the world considered an outcast, then releasing it, he turned away, and Walter was sure that his eyes were moist with something which looked like tears.
"I like him for that," was his mental comment, as he watched Mr. Graham talking with his aunt of little Jessie, who, when he bade her farewell,—for he went back that night,—clung sobbing to his neck, refusing to be comforted, until Walter whispered to her of a bright-eyed squirrel playing in its cage up in the maple tree.
Then her arms relaxed their grasp, and she went with Ellen to see the sight, while Walter accompanied Mr. Graham to the depot. There was a bond of sympathy between the man and boy, and they grew to liking each other very fast during the few moments they talked together upon the platform of the Deerwood station. Numerous were the charges Mr. Graham gave to Walter concerning his little girl, bidding him care for her as if she were his sister, and Walter felt a boyish pride in thinking how well he would fulfill his trust.
Mr. Graham could never tell what prompted him to say it, but as his mind went forward to the future, when Jessie would be grown, he said:
"She will make a beautiful woman, I think, and I hope she will be as good and pure as beautiful, so that her future husband, should she ever have one, will not look to her in vain for happiness."
It might have been that Mr. Graham was thinking of his own wife, and the little congeniality there had been between them. If so, he hastened to thrust such thoughts aside by adding, laughingly: