"Yes—if it died in Birmingham. Well, then, Dick—if the doctor could search those registers——" She stopped for a moment. They always do it on the stage, to heighten the effect.
"Well, Molly?"
"Why can't you?"
Dick sat down suddenly, knocked over by the shock of this suggestion.
"Good Heavens, Molly! Oh the depth and the height and the spring and the leap of woman's wit! Why can't I? why can't I? Molly, I am a log, and a lump, and a lout. I deserve that you should take my half-brother. No—not that! Good-bye, good-bye, incomparable shepherdess!" He raised her hand and kissed it. "I fly—I hasten—on the wings of the wind—to Birmingham—the city of Hidden Truth—to read the Revelations of the Register."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
A WRETCH.
Hilarie sat alone in the deep recesses of the western porch of the old church. Although it was November, this sheltered porch was still warm; the swallows that make the summer, and their friends the swifts, were gone; the leaves which still clung to the trees were red and brown and yellow; the grass which clothed the graves no longer waved under the breeze with light and shade and sunshine; none of the old bedesmen were walking the churchyard; even the children in the school were silent over their work, as if singing only belonged to summer; and the wind whistled mournfully in the branches of the yew. Her face, always so calm and restful to others, was troubled and disturbed as she sat by herself.
She held two letters in her hand. One of them was open. She had already read it twice; now she read it a third time. It was from Molly, and it ran as follows:—