“Wasn’t Miss Milly just as silly as any on us?” asked Rachel, who knew his weak point; “and if she was here to-night, instead of over Jordan, don’t you believe she’d take the little critter as her own?”
“That’s nothing to do with it,” returned the Judge. “The question is, how shall we dispose of it—to-night, I mean, for in the morning I shall see about its being taken to the poor-house.”
“The poor-house!” repeated Rachel. “Ain’t it writ on that paper, ‘The Lord sarve you and yourn as you sarve her and hern’? Thar’s a warnin’ in that which I shall mind ef you don’t. The baby ain’t a-goin’ to the poor-house. I’ll take it myself first. A hen don’t scratch no harder for thirteen than she does for twelve, and though Joe ain’t no kind o’ count, I can manage somehow. Shall I consider it mine?”
“Yes, till morning,” answered the Judge, who really had no definite idea as to what he intended doing with the helpless creature thus forced upon him against his will.
He abhorred children,—he would not for anything have one abiding in his house, and especially this one of so doubtful parentage; still he was not quite inclined to cast it off, and he wished there was some one with whom to advise. Then, as he remembered the expected coming of his son, he thought, “Richard will tell me what to do!” and feeling somewhat relieved he returned to his chamber, while Rachel hurried off to her cabin, where, in a few words, she explained the matter to Joe, who, being naturally of a lazy temperament, was altogether too sleepy to manifest emotion of any kind, and was soon snoring as loudly as ever.
In his rude pine cradle little Finn was sleeping, and once Rachel thought to lay the stranger baby with him; but proud as she was of her color and of her youngest born, too, she felt that there was a dividing line over which she must not pass, so Finn was finally removed to the pillow of his sire, the cradle re-arranged, and the baby carefully lain to rest.
Meantime, on his bedstead of rosewood, Judge Howell tried again to sleep, but all in vain were his attempts to woo the wayward goddess, and he lay awake until the moon, struggling through the broken clouds, shone upon the floor. Then, in the distance, he heard the whistle of the night express, and knew it was past midnight.
“I wish that Maine woman had been drowned in Passamaquoddy Bay!” said he, rolling his pillow into a ball and beating it with his fist. “Yes, I do, for I’ll be hanged if I want to be bothered this way! Hark! I do believe she’s prowling round the house yet,” he continued, as he thought he caught the sound of a footstep upon the gravelled walk.
He was not mistaken in the sound, and he was about getting up for the third and, as he swore to himself, the last time, when a loud ring of the bell, and a well-known voice, calling: “Father! father! let me in,” told him that not the Maine woman, but his son Richard, had come. Hastening down the stairs, he unlocked the door, and Richard Howell stepped into the hall, his boots bespattered with mud, his clothes wet with the heavy rain, and his face looking haggard and pale by the dim light of the lamp his father carried in his hand.
“Why, Dick!” exclaimed the Judge, “what ails you? You are as white as a ghost.”