Nina could not truthfully deny the statement, but softened the blow by putting her arms about his neck and kissing him softly on the forehead.
It was Judge North's wish to give the young couple a fine wedding in Omaha, but this they firmly declined.
Lige and Beatrice had decided to be married soon, and the two young couples had planned a double wedding, at which the gentle Quaker father, minister, justice, should officiate.
It was while the preparations for the double wedding were going briskly forward that Joe received a letter from Judge North one day, asking him to come to Omaha at once, and bring Nina with him.
When they arrived the Judge met them at the door and led them into his private office. They saw that he looked very grave, and they were no sooner seated than he turned to Nina and took her hand.
"My child," he said, in a tone that sent premonitory chills of trouble into the hearts of the two young people, "you must prepare yourself for a great blow."
"A blow?" Nina turned pale. "What kind of a blow?"
Joe too had whitened. "What is it, Judge?" he asked, wondering if some insurmountable barrier to his marriage with Nina had been discovered.
"I have been very busy tracing back these deeds and looking up the estate that I hoped your grandfather Carroll had left his son," the Judge went on, "and which you, as his only heir, should inherit. But to my deep regret and sorrow I found that the property, the deeds of which were found in the dispatch-box, had long ago passed into the hands of some distant cousins, and that the fortune which we supposed Colonel Carroll to possess was so wasted by his spendthrift son, and so dissipated by his long search for Lee and his own long illness, that there was nothing of it left when the will was probated."
"Is that all?" Nina drew a deep breath and loosed the grip of her hands in her lap. "Great heavens, Uncle, you nearly frightened me out of my wits. I thought—I thought something terrible had happened."