"Let me go! let me go! I don't know you! I'm a stranger to you—that isn't my name!" he vociferated wildly. "Mother, take her off and hold her, won't you?"
Thus adjured, the old woman come to his relief, and soon had the pretty maid a prisoner in her own strong arms.
"What's the matter with you, you little crazy wild-cat?" she demanded roughly, but Hetty was gazing malignantly at Warwick, who regarded her with an injured air.
"Young woman, you've made a mistake. I don't know you!" he was saying.
"Oh, don't I, Mr. Lindsey Warwick?" cried Hetty, taking revenge for her slighted love. "Maybe that ain't your name, neither! Maybe I don't intend to scream for the police, and give you up to them, and claim the reward, you villain!"
She was opening her mouth for a prolonged shriek, when a hand was clapped over it, and Lindsey Warwick cried out laughingly:
"You silly darling, can't you take a joke? Of course my name isn't Warwick, but Watson Hunter, and I was only teasing you a little to pay you back for running off from Rosemont and leaving me in the lurch."
Hetty gasped in his clutch and he loosened it gently, seeing that his falsehoods had begun to bewilder and soften her angry mood.
"Why didn't you write to me when you left Rosemont?" continued the arch deceiver. "I was down there a day or two after the family packed up to leave, and I thought you had gone away with them and given me the jilt. But you won't get away from me again, for we'll go to the preacher this very day, won't we, dearie?"