"Oh, but uncle! you don't believe Dorn could be guilty, do you?"
He looked at her pale anxious face with a feeling of deep pity,—for his eyes were keen enough to see that it was of her lover she spoke,—and replied with unwonted tenderness:
"No, my poor child. No, I don't; and I wouldn't if I knew nothing more about him than your trust in him."
Two low sounds mingled softly, and were doubtless duly noted by the recording angel on duty: a sigh from Uncle Thatcher, and a sniff of disgust from his lean and rancorous wife in the dark room behind him. He sighed to think, as he looked at Mary, and appreciated the worth of her full and perfect love, what a treasure his profligate son had lost in her, among all the good he had recklessly cast from him. Aunt Thatcher sniffed because she did not dare to express openly her contempt for his weakness in manifesting sympathy for the poor orphan who had won her hearty and unextinguishable hatred by rejection of Silas's advances.
"And if Dorn cannot, as you say it is difficult to do, prove himself innocent, what will they do with him?"
"They'll hang him," exclaimed Aunt Thatcher, in a tone of malicious triumph, unable longer to contain herself, and now appearing in the door to enjoy Mary's horror.
Uncle Thatcher turned upon her with a look of disgust and retorted:
"Sallie Thatcher, if the devil himself ain't ashamed of you, he's meaner than I take him for."
"Oh, indeed! I'm so bad, am I? Thank you, Mr. Thatcher. Just because I don't choose to take up for a murderer and a thief. I'm sure any body might have known what he'd come to when he commenced by nearly killing my poor boy."
"Your 'poor boy' deserved all he got, and more, too; and I've good reasons of my own for thinking that we'll both see the day we'll have to regret that Dorn Hackett didn't finish him then."