Thrice Judge Howell, touched with compassion by his pale, suffering face, offered to take his place, bidding Oliver lie down while he sang of Milly’s eyes and hair; but Lawrence detected the fraud in an instant. He knew the shaking, tremulous tones, raised sometimes to a screech and then dying away in a whisper, came from another than Oliver Hawkins, and his lip curled with supreme disdain as, raising himself upon his elbow, he said:
“You can’t cheat me, old fellow, and you may as well send Clubs back again.”
So poor Clubs went back, staying by him night and day, until human strength could endure no more; and he one morning fell forward upon the bed, deluging it with the blood which gushed from his mouth and nose.
With an almost superhuman effort, Judge Howell took him in his arms,—gently, tenderly, for Mildred’s sake,—and carrying him down the Cold Spring path, laid him away in the little room beneath the gable-roof, where there was none to sing to him of Mildred, none to comfort him save Hepsy, whose homely attempts were worse than failures, and who did him more hurt than good by constantly accusing Lawrence Thornton of being the cause of his illness. Indeed, she seemed rather to enjoy it when she heard, as she did, how Lawrence moaned for “Clubs,” growing daily worse until at last the physician feared that he would die. This, however, she kept from Oliver, who lay all the day on his low bed, never seeing but one person from Beechwood, and that the Judge, who came at his request, and was in close consultation with him for more than an hour.
The result of this interview was a determination on the part of Judge Howell and Mr. Thornton to sift the matter of Mildred’s parentage more thoroughly and see if there were not some mistake.
“Certainly,” said Geraldine, when the subject was mentioned to her. “I would leave no stone unturned to test the truth of Esther Bennett’s assertion. Only this morning it occurred to me that possibly Hannah Hawkins might have received some hint from that old witch; for I have heard that when she was dying she tried to speak of Mildred, and pointed toward Beechwood. I’ll go down to-night and question Mrs. Thompson.”
Accordingly that evening found Geraldine seated in Hepsy’s kitchen and so wonderfully gracious that the old lady mentally styled her a right nice girl, and wondered how she could ever have called her “nippin’” and “stuck up.”
Warily, cautiously, little by little, step by step, did Geraldine approach the object of her visit, throwing out a hint here and a bait there, until, feeling sure of her subject, she came out openly, and asked old Hepsy “if she had any objections to telling a lie provided she were well paid for it.”
“But, mercy! Is there any one who can hear us?” she added, drawing near to Hepsy, who replied: “Not a soul,” forgetting the while the stove-pipe hole cut through the floor of the chamber above, where Oliver was listening eagerly to the conversation.
Not one word escaped him, and when it was finished he knew as well as Hepsy that for fifty dollars and a half-worn black silk dress, she was to stain her soul with a wicked lie,—was to say that in rummaging Hannah’s things she came across a little box, which had not been opened since her daughter’s death, and which when opened was found to contain a letter from Esther Bennett, telling her who the child of her adoption was, but bidding her to keep it a secret from everybody.