"What's this I hear about you and Sim Black?"
She looked down, and the whiteness of her face and throat turned to rose.
"I would hang my head," giving her a slight shake. "What do you suppose that young beggar had the impudence to do this morning when I went over to Roswell? to ask me for you—you—old Jabez Galer's grand-daughter; declared that he had always loved you, and that it was with your consent he came to me."
"Yes sir," she said, in a low tone, tracing a seam in the floor with the toe of her neat little shoe.
He stamped the floor. "Well, he'll not get you, do you hear? Do you think I raised you, educated you, to marry a miserable little lawyer without a rood of land or a nigger to his name? No, sirrah!"
"I thought you always intended me to be happy, sir," paling again before his wrath, but firm.
"So I do, but you'll be happy in my way, marry the man I have selected for you, and his name is—Josiah Williamson."
She stared at him in a disconcertingly amazed, shocked way.
"Why, grandpa!"
"What's the matter, now?"