“But can’t you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?” urged Bessie. “Can’t you go to them and say that? Won’t that do it?”
“Lord bless you!” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter its simplicities.
“O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me!” pleaded Bessie.
He gave her a kinder glance than she had ever received from him before in her life. It occurred to him, as if it were for the first time, that she was very sweet and helpless, and that she was his own grandchild. He had hated her father. O, how he had hated the conceited city upstart, with his pert, positive ways! how he had rejoiced over his bankruptcy, if not over his death! The girl he had taken to his home, because, after all, she was a Lauson by blood, and it would be a family shame to let her go begging her bread of strangers. But she had not won upon him; she looked too much like that “damn jackanapes,” her father; moreover, she had contemptible city accomplishments, and she moped in the seclusion of Barham. He had been glad when she became engaged to that other “damn jackanapes,” Foster; and it had been agreeable to think that her marriage would take her out of his sight. Mercy had made a will in her favor; he had sniffed and hooted at Mercy for her folly; but, after all, he had in his heart consented to the will; it saved him from leaving any of his money to a Barron.
Of late, however, there had been a softening in the Squire; he could himself hardly believe that it was in his heart; he half suspected at times that it was in his brain. A man who lives to ninety-three is exposed to this danger, that he may survive all his children. The Squire had walked to one grave after another, until he had buried his last son and his last daughter. After Mercy Lauson, there were no more children for him to see under ground; and that fact, coupled with the shocking nature of her death, had strangely shaken him; it had produced that singular softening which we have mentioned, and which seemed to him like a malady. Now, a little shattered, no longer the man that he so long had been, he was face to face with his only living descendant.
He reached out his gray, hard hand, and laid it on her glossy, curly hair. She started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch, and looked up in his face with a tearful sparkle of hope.
“Be quiet, Bessie,” he said, in a voice which was less like a caw than usual.
“O grandfather! what do you mean?” she sobbed, guessing that deliverance might be nigh, and yet fearing to fall back into despair.
“Don’t cry,” was the only response of this close-mouthed, imperturbable old man.