“Hurry up, Clubs, for Heaven’s sake. I’ve stuck a confounded stub through my boot,” cried the Judge, limping with pain, as he went wheezing to the spot which Oliver had reached long before him.
From his position beneath the window, Oliver had heard the entire conversation, but not knowing the contents of the letter, he was at a loss to comprehend how Lawrence Thornton could be Mildred’s uncle. Something, however, had affected her terribly, he knew, for there was no mistaking the look of hopeless suffering stamped upon the rigid face he lifted gently up and rested on his arm.
“What is it, Clubs? What’s the row? Let me take her,” and the panting Judge relieved Oliver of the fainting girl, whom he held carefully in his arms, talking to her the while in his own peculiar way. “There, there, honey. What is it? Come to a little, can’t you? Open your eyes, won’t you? and don’t look so much as though you were dead.” Then feeling for her pulse, he screamed: “She is dead, Clubs! She is dead! and you, old long-toothed madame,” shaking his fist at the old hag Esther Bennett, “you killed her with some blasted lie, and I’ll have you hung up by the heels on the first good tree I find. Do you hear?”
Having thus relieved his mind, the excited Judge carried Mildred into the open air, which roused her for a moment, but when she saw Esther Bennett she sank back again into the same death-like swoon, moaning faintly:
“Oh, Lawrence, Lawrence, lost forever!”
“No he ain’t,—no he ain’t,” said the Judge, but his words fell on deaf ears, and turning to Oliver, who had been hastily reading the letter, he asked what it was.
“Listen,” and in a voice which trembled with strong emotion, Oliver read it through, while the Judge’s face dropped lower and lower until it rested upon the cold, white forehead of Mildred, who lay so helpless in his arms.
“Bob Thornton’s grandchild,” he whispered. “Bob Thornton’s grandchild! Must I then lose my little Milly?” and great tears, such as Judge Howell only could shed, fell like rain on Mildred’s face.
“There may be some mistake,” suggested Oliver, and catching at once the idea, the Judge swore roundly that there was a mistake. “Needn’t tell him; blamed if he’d believe that ’twa’n’t some big lie got up by somebody for something,” and turning to the woman he demanded of her savagely to confess the fraud.
But Esther Bennett answered him: