Every bit of color faded out of her face by the time she reached the bottom of the sheet, and with staring eyes and bated breath she seized its mate and proceeded to read that.
"Good land!" she ejaculated at length. "Now I understand some things that have always puzzled me afore! So this is Belle Atwood's marriage-bill, and this tells about Cliff's baptism! And Faxon isn't his last name, either!" she went on, with a gasp of excitement. "It is—he is—why, good Lord!—now I know why Squire Talford has always hated him so; though I never did take much stock in that story I heard when I first came here—that he was in love with her once, and she jilted him for some one else."
She sat thinking deeply for some time, a look of perplexity on her plain, honest face.
"There's some things I can't quite see through, after all," she resumed after a time; "if what I suspect is true—and there ain't much doubt about it—why on earth did Mis' Faxon ever bind that boy to the squire? Aha!" a flash of intelligence sweeping over her face, "I begin to see—it was a trick of his. He is not a man that ever forgives a wrong—he hated her and the boy's father and the boy himself, because of what they'd done. He meant to crush 'em all, and so he pretended to befriend Mis' Faxon—wormed himself into her confidence, so got her to sign them bond papers, and then, when she died, stole this box, so the boy could never find out who he really is. I remember now that she sent for him the night she died. I'll bet he stole these papers at that time. Oh! he's a tricky one, Squire Talford is! He thought he'd fixed things so that nobody'd ever find out the truth; but it's a long lane that hasn't any turn in it, and I'm goin' to prove it to you, you miserly, gray-headed, hard-hearted old rascal!"
And Mrs. Kimberly emphasized her words by angrily shaking the papers in her hand at the demolished old trunk, in lieu of the man himself, until they rattled noisily.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SQUIRE MEETS MISS HEATHERFORD.
"Humph!" Maria resumed after some minutes, and, arousing herself from another fit of musing into which she had fallen, "I always thought there was a skeleton hid in this old hair trunk, and now I've unearthed it. 'Murder will out,' they say, and I guess the Lord thought He'd make me His instrument to see justice done that boy. He just sent me up here to-day to smash the thing, and now I s'pose I've got to finish the business up. I'm going to take charge of these papers and see that Cliff gets them."
She began to replace them and the letters in the box as she spoke, with a set face and determined air.
"Of course, I shall tell the squire just how I happened to find 'em," she went on. "I ain't one to hide anything. I'll just face him and out with the whole matter, but they ain't never goin' back into his possession again if I lose my place for it!" She handled the letters reverently as she laid them, one by one, into their receptacle, her face softening involuntarily.