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MILDRED.
A Novel.

BY

Mrs. MARY J. HOLMES,

AUTHOR OF

EDITH LYLE—EDNA BROWNING—TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE—’LENA RIVERS—WEST LAWN—MARIAN GREY—HUGH WORTHINGTON—ETHELYN’S MISTAKE, ETC., ETC.

“——Love soweth here with toil and care,

But the harvest-time of Love is there.”

Southey.

NEW YORK:

G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers.

LONDON: S. LOW & CO.

MDCCCLXXVII.

Copyright by

DANIEL HOLMES.

1877.

Trow’s

Printing and Bookbinding Co.,

205–213 East 12th St.,

NEW YORK.

TO

MRS. G. W. CARLETON

[OF NEW YORK CITY],

I DEDICATE THIS STORY OF

MILDRED,

IN MEMORY

OF THE MANY HAPPY HOURS SPENT WITH HER

OF THE “STARRY EYES AND

NUT-BROWN HAIR.”

Brockport, N. Y.,

October, 1877.

CONTENTS.

MILDRED.

CHAPTER I.
THE STORM, AND WHAT IT BROUGHT.

The sultry September day was drawing to a close, and as the sun went down, a dark thunder-cloud came slowly up from the west, muttering in deep undertones, and emitting occasional gleams of lightning by way of heralding the coming storm, from which both man and beast intuitively sought shelter. Ere long the streets of Mayfield were deserted, save by the handsome carriage and span of spirited grays, which went dashing through the town toward the large house upon the hill, the residence of Judge Howell, who paid no heed to the storm, so absorbed was he in the letter which he held in his hand, and which had roused him to a state of fearful excitement. Through the gate, and up the long avenue, lined with giant trees of maple and beech, the horses flew, and just as the rain came down in torrents they stood panting before the door of Beechwood.

“Bring me a light! Why isn’t there one already here?” roared the Judge, as he stalked into his library, and banged the door with a crash scarcely equalled by the noise of the tempest without.

“Got up a little thunder-storm on his own account! Wonder what’s happened him now!” muttered Rachel, the colored housekeeper, as she placed a lamp upon the table, and then silently left the room.

Scarcely was she gone when, seating himself in his armchair, the Judge began to read again the letter which had so much disturbed him. It was post-marked at a little out-of-the-way place among the backwoods of Maine, and it purported to have come from a young mother, who asked him to adopt a little girl, nearly two months old.

“Her family is fully equal to your own,” the mother wrote; “and should you take my baby, you need never blush for her parentage. I have heard of you, Judge Howell. I know that you are rich, that you are comparatively alone, and there are reasons why I would rather my child should go to Beechwood than any other spot in the wide world. You need her, too,—need something to comfort your old age, for with all your money, you are far from being happy.”

“The deuce I am!” muttered the Judge. “How did the trollop know that, or how did she know of me, any way? I take a child to comfort my old age! Ridiculous! I’m not old,—I’m only fifty,—just in the prime of life; but I hate young ones, and I won’t have one in my house! I’m tormented enough with Rachel’s dozen, and if that madame brings hers here, I’ll——”

The remainder of the sentence was cut short by a peal of thunder, so long and loud that even the exasperated Judge was still until the roar had died away; then, resuming the subject of his remarks, he continued:

“Thanks to something, this letter has been two weeks on the road, and as she is tired of looking for an answer by this time, I sha’n’t trouble myself to write,—but what of Richard?—I have not yet seen why he is up there in New Hampshire, chasing after that Hetty, when he ought to have been home weeks ago;” and taking from his pocket another and an unopened letter, he read why his only son and heir of all his vast possessions was in New Hampshire “chasing after Hetty,” as he termed it.

Hetty Kirby was a poor relation, whom the Judge’s wife had taken into the family, and treated with the utmost kindness and consideration; on her death-bed she had committed the young girl to her husband’s care, bidding him be kind to Hetty for her sake. In Judge Howell’s crusty heart there was one soft, warm spot,—the memory of his wife and beautiful young daughter, the latter of whom died within a few months after her marriage. They had loved the orphan Hetty, and for their sakes, he had kept her until accident revealed to him the fact that to his son, then little more than a boy, there was no music so sweet as Hetty’s voice,—no light so bright as that which shone in Hetty’s eye.

Then the lion was roused, and he turned her from his door, while Richard was threatened with disinheritance if he dared to think again of the humble Hetty. There was no alternative but to submit, for Judge Howell’s word was law, and, with a sad farewell to what had been her home so long, Hetty went back to the low-roofed house among the granite hills, where her mother and half-imbecile grandmother were living.

Richard, too, returned to college, and from that time not a word had passed between the father and the son concerning the offending Hetty until now, when Richard wrote that she was dead, together with her grandmother,—that news of her illness had been forwarded to him, and immediately after leaving college, in July, he had hastened to New Hampshire, and staid by her until she died.

“You can curse me for it if you choose,” he said, “but it will not make the matter better. I loved Hetty Kirby: while living, I love her memory now that she is dead; and in that little grave beneath the hill I have buried my heart forever.”

The letter closed by saying that Richard would possibly be home that night, and he asked that the carriage might be in waiting at the depot.

The news of Hetty’s death kept the Judge silent for a moment, while his heart gave one great throb as he thought of the fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, who had so often ministered to his comfort.

“Poor thing, she’s in heaven, I’m sure,” he said; “and if I was ever harsh to her, it’s too late to help it now. I always liked her well enough, but I did not like her making love to Richard. He’ll get over it, too, even if he does talk about his heart being buried in her grave. Stuff and nonsense! Just as if a boy of twenty knows where his heart is. Needn’t tell me. He’ll come to his senses after he’s been home a spell, and that reminds me that I must send the carriage for him. Here, Ruth,” he continued, as he saw a servant passing in the hall, “tell Joe not to put out the horses, or if he has, to harness up again. Richard is coming home, and he must meet him at the station.”

Ruth departed with the message and the Judge again took up the letter in which a child had been offered for his adoption. Very closely he scrutinized the handwriting, but it was not a familiar one to him. He had never seen it before, and, tearing the paper in pieces, he scattered them upon the floor.

The storm by this time had partially subsided, and he heard the carriage wheels grinding into the gravel as Joe drove from the house. Half an hour went by, and then the carriage returned again; but Richard was not in it, and the father sat down alone to the supper kept in waiting for his son. It was a peculiarity of the Judge to retire precisely at nine o’clock; neither friend nor foe could keep him up beyond that hour, he said; and on this evening, as on all others, the lights disappeared from his room just as the nine o’clock bell was heard in the distance. But the Judge was nervous to-night. The thunder which at intervals continued to roar, made him restless, and ten o’clock found him even more wakeful than he had been an hour before.

“What the plague ails me?” he exclaimed, tossing uneasily from side to side, “and what the deuce can that be? Rachel’s baby as I live! What is she doing with it here? If there’s anything I detest, it is a baby’s squall. Just hear that, will you?” and raising himself upon his elbow he listened intently to what was indisputably an infant wail, rising even above the storm, for it had commenced raining again, and the thunder at times was fearfully loud.

“Screech away,” said the Judge, as a cry, sharper and more prolonged, fell upon his ear; “screech away till you split your throat; but I’ll know why a Christian man, who hates children, must be driven distracted in his own house,” and stepping into the hall, he called out, at the top of his voice, “Ho, Rachel!” but no Rachel made her appearance; and a little further investigation sufficed to show that she had retired to the little cottage in the back yard, which, in accordance with a Southern custom, the Judge, who was a Virginian, had built for herself and her husband. Rachel was also a native of Virginia, but for many years she had lived at Beechwood, where she was now the presiding genius,—and the one servant whom the Judge trusted above all others. But she had one great fault, at which her master chafed terribly; she had nearly as many children as the fabled woman who lived in a shoe. Indeed there seemed to be no end to the little darkies who daily sunned themselves upon the velvety sward in front of their cabin door, and were nightly stowed away in the three wide trundle-beds, which Rachel brought forth from unheard-of hiding-places, and made up near her own. If there was one thing in the world more than another which the Judge professed to hate, it was children, and when Rachel innocently asked him to name her twelfth, he answered wrathfully:

“A dozen,—the old Harry!—call it Finis,—and let it be so,—do you hear?”

“Yes, marster,” was the submissive answer, and so Finis, or Finn, for short, was the name given to the child, which the Judge fancied was so disturbing him, as, leaning over the banister, he called aloud to Rachel, “to stop that noise, and carry Finn back where he belonged.”

“She has carried him back, I do believe,” he said to himself, as he heard how still it was below, and retiring to his room, he tried again to sleep, succeeding so far as to fall away into a doze, from which he was aroused by a thunder-crash, which shook the massive building to its foundation, and wrung from the watch-dog, Tiger, who kept guard without, a deafening yell.

But to neither of these sounds did the Judge pay the least attention, for, mingled with them, and continuing after both had died away, was that same infant wail, tuned now to a higher, shriller note, as if the little creature were suffering from fear or bodily pain.

“Might as well try to sleep in bedlam!” exclaimed the exasperated Judge, stepping from his bed a second time, and commencing to dress himself, while his nervousness and irritability increased in proportion as the cries grew louder and more alarming.

Striking a light and frowning wrathfully at the sour, tired-looking visage reflected by the mirror, he descended the stairs and entered the kitchen, where everything was in perfect order, even to the kindlings laid upon the hearth for the morning fire. The cries, too, were fainter there and could scarcely be heard at all, but as he retraced his steps and came again into the lower hall, he heard them distinctly, and also Tiger’s howl. Guided by the sound, he kept on his way until he reached the front door, when a thought flashed upon him which rendered him for an instant powerless to act. What if that Maine woman, tired of waiting for an answer to her letter, had taken some other way of accomplishing her purpose? What if he should find a baby on his steps! “But I sha’n’t,” he said, decidedly; “I won’t, and if I do, I’ll kick it into the street, or something,” and emboldened by this resolution he unlocked the door, and shading the lamp with his hand, peered cautiously out into the darkness.

With a cry of delight Tiger sprang forward, nearly upsetting his master, who staggered back a pace or two, and then, recovering himself, advanced again toward the open door.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, thrusting his head out into the rain, which was dropping fast through the thick vine leaves which overhung the lattice of the portico.

As if to disprove this assertion, the heavens for an instant blazed with light, and showed him where a small white object lay in a willow basket beneath the seat built on either side of the door. He knew it was not Finn, for the tiny fingers which grasped the basket edge were white and pure as wax, while the little dimples about the joints involuntarily carried him back to a time when just such a baby hand as this had patted his bearded cheek or pulled his long black hair. Perhaps it was the remembrance of that hand, now cold in death, which prompted him to a nearer survey of the contents of the basket, and setting down his lamp, he stooped to draw it forth, while Tiger stood by trembling with joy that his vigils were ended, and that human aid had come at last to the helpless creature he had guarded with the faithfulness peculiar to his race.

It was a fair, round face which met the judge’s view as he removed the flannel blanket, and the bright, pretty eyes which looked up into his were full of tears. But the Judge hardened his heart, and though he did not kick the baby into the rain, he felt strongly tempted so to do, and glancing toward the cornfield not far away, where he fancied the mother might be watching the result, he screamed:

“Come here, you madame, and take the brat away, for I sha’n’t touch it, you may depend upon that.”

Having thus relieved his mind, he was about to re-enter the house, when, as if divining his intention, Tiger planted his huge form in the doorway, and effectually kept him back.

“Be quiet, Tiger, be quiet,” said the Judge, stroking his shaggy mane; but Tiger refused to move, until at last, as if seized by a sudden instinct, he darted toward the basket, which he took in his mouth, and carried into the hall.

“It sha’n’t be said a brute is more humane than myself,” thought the Judge, and leaving the dog and the baby together, he stalked across the yard, and, pounding on Rachel’s door, bade her come to the house at once.

But a few moments elapsed ere Rachel stood in the hall, her eyes protruding like harvest apples when she saw the basket and the baby it contained. The twelve young Van Brunts sleeping in their three trundle-beds, had enlarged her motherly heart, just as the Judge’s lonely condition had shrivelled his, and kneeling down she took the wee thing in her arms, called it a “little honey,” and then, woman-like, examined its dress, which was of the finest material, and trimmed with costly lace.

“It’s none of your low-flung truck,” she said. “The edgin’ on its slip cost a heap, and its petticoats is all worked with floss.”

“Petticoats be hanged!” roared the Judge. “Who cares for worked petticoats? The question is, what are we to do with it?”

“Do with it?” repeated Rachel, hugging it closer to her bosom. “Keep it, in course. ’Pears like it seems mighty nigh to me,” and she gave it another squeeze, this time uttering a faint outcry, for a sharp point of something had penetrated through the thin folds of her gingham dress. “Thar’s somethin’ fastened to ’t,” she said, and removing the blanket, she saw a bit of paper pinned to the infant’s waist. “This may ’splain the matter,” she continued, passing it to the Judge, who read, in the same handwriting of the letter: “God prosper you, Judge Howell, in proportion as you are kind to my baby, whom I have called Mildred.”

“Mildred!” repeated the judge, “Mildred be——”

He did not finish the sentence, for he seemed to hear far back in the past a voice much like his own, saying aloud:

“I, Jacob, take thee, Mildred, to be my wedded wife.”

The Mildred taken then in that shadowy old church had been for years a loving, faithful wife, and another Mildred, too, with starry eyes and nut-brown hair had flitted through his halls, calling him her father. The Maine woman must surely have known of this when she gave her offspring the only name in the world which could possibly have touched the Judge’s heart. With a perplexed expression upon his face, he stood rubbing his hands together, while Rachel launched forth into a stream of baby-talk, like that with which she was wont to edify her twelve young blackbirds.

“For Heaven’s sake, stop that! You fairly turn my stomach,” said the Judge, as she added the finishing touch by calling the child “a pessus ’ittle darlin’ dumplin’!” “You women are precious big fools with babies!”

“Wasn’t Miss Milly just as silly as any on us?” asked Rachel, who knew his weak point; “and if she was here to-night, instead of over Jordan, don’t you believe she’d take the little critter as her own?”

“That’s nothing to do with it,” returned the Judge. “The question is, how shall we dispose of it—to-night, I mean, for in the morning I shall see about its being taken to the poor-house.”

“The poor-house!” repeated Rachel. “Ain’t it writ on that paper, ‘The Lord sarve you and yourn as you sarve her and hern’? Thar’s a warnin’ in that which I shall mind ef you don’t. The baby ain’t a-goin’ to the poor-house. I’ll take it myself first. A hen don’t scratch no harder for thirteen than she does for twelve, and though Joe ain’t no kind o’ count, I can manage somehow. Shall I consider it mine?”

“Yes, till morning,” answered the Judge, who really had no definite idea as to what he intended doing with the helpless creature thus forced upon him against his will.

He abhorred children,—he would not for anything have one abiding in his house, and especially this one of so doubtful parentage; still he was not quite inclined to cast it off, and he wished there was some one with whom to advise. Then, as he remembered the expected coming of his son, he thought, “Richard will tell me what to do!” and feeling somewhat relieved he returned to his chamber, while Rachel hurried off to her cabin, where, in a few words, she explained the matter to Joe, who, being naturally of a lazy temperament, was altogether too sleepy to manifest emotion of any kind, and was soon snoring as loudly as ever.

In his rude pine cradle little Finn was sleeping, and once Rachel thought to lay the stranger baby with him; but proud as she was of her color and of her youngest born, too, she felt that there was a dividing line over which she must not pass, so Finn was finally removed to the pillow of his sire, the cradle re-arranged, and the baby carefully lain to rest.

Meantime, on his bedstead of rosewood, Judge Howell tried again to sleep, but all in vain were his attempts to woo the wayward goddess, and he lay awake until the moon, struggling through the broken clouds, shone upon the floor. Then, in the distance, he heard the whistle of the night express, and knew it was past midnight.

“I wish that Maine woman had been drowned in Passamaquoddy Bay!” said he, rolling his pillow into a ball and beating it with his fist. “Yes, I do, for I’ll be hanged if I want to be bothered this way! Hark! I do believe she’s prowling round the house yet,” he continued, as he thought he caught the sound of a footstep upon the gravelled walk.

He was not mistaken in the sound, and he was about getting up for the third and, as he swore to himself, the last time, when a loud ring of the bell, and a well-known voice, calling: “Father! father! let me in,” told him that not the Maine woman, but his son Richard, had come. Hastening down the stairs, he unlocked the door, and Richard Howell stepped into the hall, his boots bespattered with mud, his clothes wet with the heavy rain, and his face looking haggard and pale by the dim light of the lamp his father carried in his hand.

“Why, Dick!” exclaimed the Judge, “what ails you? You are as white as a ghost.”

“I am tired and sick,” was Richard’s reply. “I’ve scarcely slept for several weeks.”

“Been watching with Hetty, I dare say,” thought the Judge; but he merely said: “Why didn’t you come at seven, as you wrote you would?”

“I couldn’t conveniently,” Richard replied: “and, as I was anxious to get here as soon as possible, I took the night express, and have walked from the depot. But what is that?” he continued, as he entered the sitting-room, and saw the willow basket standing near the door.

“Dick,” and the Judge’s voice dropped to a nervous whisper,—“Dick, if you’ll believe me, some infernal Maine woman has had a baby, and left it on our steps. She wrote first to know if I’d take it, but the letter was two weeks coming. I didn’t get it until to-night, and, as I suppose she was tired of waiting, she brought it along right in the midst of that thunder-shower. She might have known I’d kick it into the street, just as I said I would,—the trollop!”

“Oh, father!” exclaimed the more humane young man, “you surely didn’t treat the innocent child so cruelly!”

“No, I didn’t, though my will was good enough,” answered the father. “Just think of the scandalous reports that are certain to follow. It will be just like that gossiping Widow Simms to get up some confounded yarn, and involve us both, the wretch! But I sha’n’t keep it,—I shall send it to the poor-house.”

And, by way of adding emphasis to his words, he gave the basket a shove, which turned it bottom side up, and scattered over the floor sundry articles of baby-wear, which had before escaped his observation.

Among these was a tiny pair of red morocco shoes; for the “Maine woman,” as he called her, had been thoughtful both for the present and future wants of her child.

“Look, father,” said Richard, taking them up and holding them to the light. “They are just like those sister Mildred used to wear. You know mother saved them, because they were the first; and you have them still in your private drawer.”

Richard had touched a tender chord, and it vibrated at once, bringing to his father memories of a little soft, fat foot, which had once been encased in a slipper much like the one Richard held in his hand. The patter of that foot had ceased forever, and the soiled, worn shoe was now a sacred thing, even though the owner had grown up to beautiful womanhood ere her home was made desolate.

“Yes, Dick,” he said, as he thought of all this. “It is like our dear Milly’s, and what is a little mysterious, the baby is called Mildred, too. It was written on a bit of paper, and pinned upon the dress.”

“Then you will keep her, won’t you? and Beechwood will not be so lonely,” returned Richard, continuing after a pause, “Where is she, this little lady? I am anxious to pay her my respects.”

“Down with Rachel, just where she ought to be,” said the Judge; and Richard rejoined, “Down with all those negroes? Oh, father, how could you? Suppose it were your child, would you want it there?”

“The deuce take it—’tain’t mine—there ain’t a drop of Howell blood in its veins, the Lord knows, and as for my lying awake, feeding sweetened milk to that Maine woman’s brat, I won’t do it, and that’s the end of it. I won’t, I say,—but I knew’t would be just like you to want me to keep it. You have the most unaccountable taste, and always had. There isn’t another young man of your expectations, who would ever have cared for that——”

“Father,” and Richard’s hand was laid upon the Judge’s arm. “Father, Hetty is dead, and we will let her rest, but if she had lived, I would have called no other woman my wife.”

“And the moment you had called her so, I would have disinherited you, root and branch,” was the Judge’s savage answer. “I would have seen her and you and your children starve before I would have raised my hand. The heir of Beechwood marry Hetty Kirby! Why, her father was a blacksmith and her mother a factory girl,—do you hear?”

Richard made no reply, and striking another light, he went to his chamber, where varied and bitter thoughts kept him wakeful until the September sun shone upon the wall, and told him it was morning. In the yard below he heard the sound of Rachel’s voice, and was reminded by it of the child left there the previous night. He would see it for himself, he said, and making a hasty toilet, he walked leisurely down the well-worn path which led to the cottage door. The twelve were all awake, and as he drew near, a novel sight presented itself to his view. In the rude pine cradle, the baby lay, while over it the elder Van Brunts were bending, engaged in a hot discussion as to which should have “the little white nigger for their own.” At the approach of Richard their noisy clamor ceased, and they fell back respectfully as he drew near the cradle. Richard Howell was exceedingly fond of children, and more than one of Rachel’s dusky brood had he held upon his lap, hence it was, perhaps, that he parted so gently the silken rings of soft brown hair, clustering around the baby’s brow, smoothed the velvety cheek, and even kissed the parted lips. The touch awoke the child, who seemed intuitively to know that the face bending so near to its own was a friendly one, and when Richard took it in his arms, it offered no resistance, but rather lovingly nestled its little head upon his shoulder, as he wrapped its blanket carefully about it, and started for the house.

CHAPTER II.
VILLAGE GOSSIP.

Little Mildred lay in the willow basket, where Richard Howell had placed her when he brought her from the cabin. Between himself and father there had been a spirited controversy as to what should be done with her, the one insisting that she should be sent to the poor-house, and the other that she should stay at Beechwood. The discussion lasted long, and they were still lingering at the breakfast table, when Rachel came in, her appearance indicating that she was the bearer of some important message.

“If you please,” she began, addressing herself to the Judge, “I’ve jest been down to Cold Spring after a bucket o’ water, for I feel mighty like a strong cup of hyson this mornin’, bein’ I was so broke of my rest, and the pump won’t make such a cup as Cold Spring——”

“Never mind the pump, but come to the point at once,” interposed the Judge, glancing toward the basket with a presentiment that what she had to tell concerned the little Mildred.

“Yes, that’s what I’m coming to, ef I ever get thar. You see, I ain’t an atom gossipy, but bein’ that the Thompson door was wide open, and looked invitin’ like, I thought I’d go in a minit, and after fillin’ my bucket with water,—though come to think on’t, I ain’t sure I had filled it,—had I? Let me see,—I b’lieve I had, though I ain’t sure——”

Rachel was extremely conscientious, and no amount of coaxing could have tempted her to go on until she had settled it satisfactorily as to whether the bucket was filled or not. This the Judge knew, and he waited patiently until she decided that “the bucket was filled, or else it wasn’t, one or t’other,” any way, she left it on the grass, she said, and went into Thompson’s, where she found Aunt Hepsy “choppin’ cabbage and snappin’ at the boy with the twisted feet, who was catching flies on the winder.”

“I didn’t go in to tell ’em anything particular, but when Miss Hawkins, in the bedroom, give a kind of lonesome sithe, which I knew was for dead Bessy, I thought I’d speak of our new baby that come last night in the basket; so I told ’em how’t you wanted to send it to the poor-house, but I wouldn’t let you, and was goin’ to nuss it and fotch it up as my own, and then Miss Hawkins looked up kinder sorry-like, and says, ‘Rather than suffer that, I’ll take it in place of my little Bessy.’

“You or’to of seen Aunt Hepsy then,—but I didn’t stay to hear her blow. I clipped it home as fast as ever I could, and left my bucket settin’ by the spring.”

“So you’ll have no difficulty in ascertaining whether you filled it or not,” slyly suggested Richard. Then, turning to his father, he continued, “It strikes me favorably, this letting Hannah Hawkins take the child, inasmuch as you are so prejudiced against it. She will be kind to it, I’m sure, and I shall go down to see her at once.”

There was something so cool and determined in Richard’s manner, that the Judge gave up the contest without another word, and silently watched his son as he hurried along the beaten path which led to the Cold Spring.

Down the hill, and where its gable-roof was just discernible from the windows of the Beechwood mansion, stood the low, brown house, which, for many years, had been tenanted by Hezekiah Thompson, and which, after his decease, was still occupied by Hepsabah, his wife. Only one child had been given to Hepsabah,—a gentle, blue-eyed daughter, who, after six years of happy wifehood, returned to her mother,—a widow, with two little fatherless children,—one a lame, unfortunate boy, and the other a beautiful little girl. Toward the boy with the twisted feet, Aunt Hepsy, as she was called, looked askance, while all the kinder feelings of her nature seemed called into being by the sweet, winning ways of the baby Bessy; but when one bright September day they laid the little one away beneath the autumnal grass, and came back to their home without her, she steeled her heart against the entire world, and the wretched Hannah wept on her lonely pillow, uncheered by a single word of comfort, save those her little Oliver breathed into her ear.

Just one week Bessy had lain beneath the maples when Rachel bore to the cottage news of the strange child left at the master’s door, and instantly Hannah’s heart yearned toward the helpless infant, which she offered to take for her own. At first her mother opposed the plan, but when she saw how determined Hannah was, she gave it up, and in a most unamiable frame of mind was clearing her breakfast dishes away, when Richard Howell appeared, asking to see Mrs. Hawkins. Although a few years older than himself, Hannah Thompson had been one of Richard’s earliest playmates and warmest friends. He knew her disposition well, and knew she could be trusted; and when she promised to love the little waif, whose very helplessness had interested him in its behalf, he felt sure that she would keep her word.

Half an hour later and Mildred lay sleeping in Bessy’s cradle, as calmly as if she were not the subject of the most wonderful surmises and ridiculous conjectures. On the wings of the wind the story flew that a baby had been left on Judge Howell’s steps,—that the Judge had sworn it should be sent to the poor-house; while the son, who came home at twelve o’clock at night, covered with mud and wet to the skin, had evinced far more interest in the stranger than was at all commendable for a boy scarcely out of his teens.

“But there was no tellin’ what young bucks would do, or old ones either, for that matter!” so at least said Widow Simms, the Judge’s bugbear, as she donned her shaker and palm-leaf shawl, and hurried across the fields in the direction of Beechwood, feeling greatly relieved to find that the object of her search was farther down the hill, for she stood somewhat in awe of the Judge and his proud son. But once in Hannah Hawkins’ bedroom, with her shaker on the floor and the baby on her lap, her tongue was loosened, and scarcely a person in the town who could by any possible means have been at all connected with the affair, escaped a malicious cut. The infant was then minutely examined, and pronounced the very image of the Judge, or of Captain Harrington, or of Deacon Snyder, she could not tell which.

“But I’m bound to find out,” she said; “I sha’n’t rest easy nights till I do.”

Then suddenly remembering that a kindred spirit, Polly Dutton, who lived some distance away, had probably not yet heard the news, she fastened her palm-leaf shawl with her broken-headed darning-needle, and bade Mrs. Hawkins good-morning just as a group of other visitors was announced.

All that day, and for many succeeding ones, the cottage was crowded with curious people, who had come to see the sight, and all of whom offered an opinion as to the parentage of the child. For more than four weeks a bevy of old women, with Widow Simms and Polly Dutton at their head, sat upon the character of nearly every person they knew, and when at last the sitting was ended and the verdict rendered, it was found that none had passed the ordeal so wholly unscathed as Richard Howell. It was a little strange, they admitted, that he should go to Kiah Thompson’s cottage three times a day; but then he had always been extremely fond of children, and it was but natural that he should take an interest in this one, particularly as his father had set his face so firmly against it, swearing heartily if its name were mentioned in his presence, and even threatening to prosecute the Widow Simms if she ever again presumed to say that the brat resembled him or his.

With a look of proud disdain upon his handsome, boyish face, Richard, who on account of his delicate health had not returned to college, heard from time to time what the gossiping villagers had to say of himself, and when at last it was told to him that he was exonerated from all blame, and that some had even predicted what the result would be, were his interest in the baby to continue until she were grown to womanhood, he burst into a merry laugh, the first which had escaped him since he came back to Beechwood.

“Stranger things than that had happened,” Widow Simms declared, and she held many a whispered conference with Hannah Hawkins as to the future, when Mildred would be the mistress of Beechwood, unless, indeed, Richard died before she were grown, an event which seemed not improbable, for as the autumn days wore on and the winter advanced, his failing strength became more and more perceptible, and the same old ladies, who once before had taken his case into consideration, now looked at him through medical eyes and pronounced him just gone with consumption.

Nothing but a sea voyage would save him, the physician said, and that to a warm, balmy climate. So when the spring came, he engaged a berth on board a vessel bound for the South Sea Islands, and after a pilgrimage to the obscure New Hampshire town where Hetty Kirby was buried, he came back to Beechwood one April night to bid his father adieu.

It was a stormy farewell, for loud, angry words were heard issuing from the library, and Rachel, who played the part of eaves-dropper, testified to hearing Richard say: “Listen to me, father, I have not told you all.” To which the Judge responded, “I’ll stop my ears before I’ll hear another word. You’ve told me enough already; and, from this hour, you are no son of mine. Leave me at once, and my curse go with you.”

With a face as white as marble, Richard answered, “I’ll go father, and it may be we shall never meet again; but, in the lonesome years to come, when you are old and sick, and there is none to love you, you’ll remember what you’ve said to me to-night.”

The Judge made no reply, and without another word Richard turned away. Hastening down the Cold Spring path, he entered the gable-roofed cottage, but what passed between himself and Hannah Hawkins no one knew, though all fancied it concerned the beautiful baby Mildred, who had grown strangely into the love of the young man, and who now, as he took her from her crib, put her arms around his neck, and rubbed her face against his own.

“Be kind to her, Hannah,” he said. “There are none but ourselves to care for her now;” and laying her back in her cradle, he kissed her lips and hastened away, while Hannah looked wistfully after him, wondering much what the end would be.

CHAPTER III.
NINE YEARS LATER.

Nine times the April flowers had blossomed and decayed; nine times the summer fruits had ripened and the golden harvest been gathered in; nine years of change had come and gone, and up the wooded avenue which led to Judge Howell’s residence, and also to the gable-roofed cottage, lower down the hill, two children, a boy and a girl, were slowly wending their way. The day was balmy and bright, and the grass was as fresh and green as when the summer rains were falling upon it, while the birds were singing of their nests in the far off south land, whither ere long they would go. But not of the birds, nor the grass, nor the day, was the little girl thinking, and she did not even stop to steal a flower or a stem of box from the handsome grounds of the cross old man, who many a time has screamed to her from a distance, bidding her quit her childish depredations; neither did she pay the least attention to the old decrepit Tiger, as he trotted slowly down to meet her, licking her bare feet and looking wistfully into her face as if he would ask the cause of her unwonted sadness.

“Come this way, Clubs,” she said to her companion, as they reached a point where two paths diverged from the main road, one leading to the gable-roof, and the other to the brink of a rushing stream, which was sometimes dignified with the name of river. “Come down to our playhouse, where we can be alone, while I tell you something dreadful.”

Clubs, as he was called, from his twisted feet, obeyed, and, in a few moments, they sat upon a mossy bank beneath the sycamore, where an humble playhouse had been built,—a playhouse seldom enjoyed, for the life of that little girl was not a free and easy one.

“Now, Milly, let’s have it;” and the boy Clubs looked inquiringly at her.

Bursting into tears she hid her face in his lap and sobbed:

“Tell me true,—true as you live and breathe,—ain’t I your sister Milly, and if I ain’t, who am I? Ain’t I anybody? Did I rain down as Maria Stevens said I did?”

A troubled, perplexed expression flitted over the pale face of the boy, and awkwardly smoothing the brown head resting on his patched pantaloons, he answered:

“Who told you that story, Milly; I hoped it would be long before you heard it!”

“Then ’tis true,—’tis true; and that’s why grandma scolds me so, and gives me such stinchin’ pieces of cake, and not half as much bread and milk as I can eat. Oh, dear, oh, dear,—ain’t there anybody anywhere that owns me? Ain’t I anybody’s little girl?” and the poor child sobbed passionately.

It had come to her that day, for the first time, that she was not Mildred Hawkins, as she had supposed herself to be, and coupled with the tale was a taunt concerning her uncertain parentage. But Mildred was too young to understand the hint; she only comprehended that she was nobody,—that the baby Bessy she had seen so often in her dreams was not her sister,—that the gentle, loving woman, who had died of consumption two years before, was nothing but her nurse,—and worse than all the rest, the meek, patient, self-denying Oliver, or Clubs, was not her brother. It was a cruel thing to tell her this, and Maria Stevens would never have done it, save in a burst of passion. But the deed was done, and like a leaden weight Mildred’s heart had lain in her bosom that dreary afternoon, which, it seemed to her, would never end. Anxiously she watched the sunshine creeping along the floor, and when it reached the four o’clock mark, and her class, which was the last, was called upon to spell, she drew a long sigh of relief, and taking her place, mechanically toed the mark, a ceremony then never omitted in a New England school.

But alas for Mildred; her evil genius was in the ascendant, for the first word which came to her was missed, as was the next, and the next, until she was ordered back to her seat, there to remain until her lesson was learned. Wearily she laid her throbbing head upon the desk, while the tears dropped fast upon the lettered page.

“Grandma will scold so hard and make me sit up so late to-night,” she thought, and then she wondered if Clubs would go home without her, and thus prevent her from asking him what she so much wished to know.

But Clubs never willingly deserted the little maiden, and when at last her lesson was learned and she at liberty to go, she found him by the road-side piling up sand with his twisted feet, and humming a mournful tune, which he always sung when Mildred was in disgrace.

“It was kind in you to wait,” she said, taking his offered hand. “You are real good to me;” then, as she remembered that she was nothing to him, her lip began to quiver, and the great tears rolled down her cheeks a second time.

“Don’t, Milly,” said the boy soothingly. “I’ll help you if she scolds too hard.”

Mildred made no reply, but suffered him to think it was his grandmother’s wrath she dreaded, until seated on the mossy bank, when she told him what she had heard, and appealed to him to know if it were true.

“Yes, Milly,” he said at length, “’tis true! You ain’t my sister! You ain’t any relation to me! Nine years ago, this month, you were left in a basket on Judge Howell’s steps, and they say the Judge was going to kick you into the street, but Tiger, who was young then, took the basket in his mouth and brought it into the hall!”

Involuntarily Mildred wound her arms around the neck of the old dog, who lashed the ground with his tail, and licked her hand as if he knew what it were all about.

Clubs had never heard that she was taken to Rachel’s cabin, so he told her next of the handsome, dark-eyed Richard, and without knowing why, Mildred’s pulses quickened as she heard of the young man who befriended her and carried her himself to the gable-roof.

“I was five years old then,” Oliver said; “and I just remember his bringing you in, with your great long dress hanging most to the floor. He must have liked you, for he used to come every day to see you till he went away!”

“Went where, Clubs? Went where?” and Mildred started up, the wild thought flashing upon her that she would follow him even to the ends of the earth, for if he had befriended her once he would again, and her desolate heart warmed toward the unknown Richard, with a strange feeling of love. “Say, Clubs, where is he now?” she continued, as Oliver hesitated to answer. “He is not dead,—you shan’t tell me that!”

“Not dead that I ever heard,” returned Oliver; “though nobody knows where he is. He went to the South Sea Islands, and then to India. Mother wrote to him once, but he never answered her!”

“I guess he’s dead then,” said Mildred, and her tears flowed fast to the memory of Richard Howell, far off on the plains of Bengal.

Ere long, however, her thoughts took another channel, and turning to Oliver, she said:

“Didn’t mother know who I was?”

Oliver shook his head and answered: “If she did she never told, though the night she burst that blood-vessel and died so suddenly, she tried to say something about you, for she kept gasping ‘Milly is,—Milly is,—’ and when she couldn’t tell, she pointed toward Beechwood.”

“Clubs!” and Mildred’s eyes grew black as midnight, as she looked into the boy’s face, “Clubs, Judge Howell is my father! for don’t you mind once that the widow Simms said I looked like the picture of his beautiful daughter, which hangs in the great parlor. I mean to go up there some day, and ask him if he ain’t.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t!” exclaimed Oliver, utterly confounded at the idea of Mildred’s facing the crusty, ill-natured Judge, and asking if he were not her father. “He’d pound you with his gold-headed cane. He hates you!” and Oliver’s voice sunk to a whisper. “He hates you because they do say you look like him, and act like him, too, when you are mad.”

This last remark carried Mildred’s thoughts backward a little, and for several moments she sat perfectly still; then leaving Tiger, whom all the time she had been fondling, she came to Oliver’s side, passed her hands caressingly over his face, smoothed his thin, light hair, timidly kissed his forehead, and whispered beseechingly:

“I am awful ugly, sometimes, I know. I scratched you once, Clubs, and stepped on your crooked feet, but I love you, oh, you don’t know how much; and if I ain’t your sister, you’ll love me just the same, won’t you, precious Oliver. I shall die if you don’t.”

There were tears on the meek, patient face of Oliver, but before he could reply to this appeal, they were startled by the loud, shrill cry of——

“Mildred,—Mildred Hawkins!—what are you lazin’ away here for? I’ve been to the school-house and everywhere. March home this minute, I say,” and adjusting her iron-bowed specs more firmly on her sharp, pointed nose, Hepsy Thompson came toward the two delinquents, frowning wrathfully, and casting furtive glances around her, as if in quest of Solomon’s prescription for children who loitered on the road from school. At the sight of the ogress, Mildred grew white with fear, while Oliver, winding his arm protectingly around her, whispered in her ear:

“You are sorry I am not your brother, but you must be glad that she ain’t your granny!” and he jerked his elbow toward Aunt Hepsy, who by this time had come quite near.

Yes, Mildred was glad of that, and Oliver’s remark was timely, awakening within her a feeling of defiance toward the woman who had so often tyrannized over her. Instead of crying or hiding behind Oliver, as she generally did when the old lady’s temper was at its boiling-point, she answered boldly:

“I was kept after school for missing, and then I coaxed Clubs out here to tell me who I am, for I know now I ain’t Mildred Hawkins, and you ain’t my granny either.”

It would be impossible to describe the expression of Hepsy’s face, or the attitude of her person, at that moment, as she stood with her mouth open, her green calash hanging down her back, her nose elevated, and her hands upraised in astonishment at what she had heard. For a time after Hannah’s death, Mrs. Thompson had tolerated Mildred simply because her daughter had loved her, and she could not wholly cast her off; but after a few weeks she found that the healthy, active child could be made useful in various ways, and had an opportunity presented itself, she would not have given her up. So she kept her, and Mildred now was little more than a drudge, where once she had been a petted and half-spoiled child. She washed the dishes, swept the floors, scoured the knives, scrubbed the door-sill, and latterly she had been initiated into the mysteries of shoe-closing, an employment then very common to the women and children of the Bay State. By scolding and driving, early and late, Aunt Hepsy managed to make her earn fifteen cents a day, and as this to her was quite an item, she had an object for wishing to keep Mildred with her. Thus it was not from any feeling of humanity that she with others remained silent as to Mildred’s parentage, but simply because she had an undefined fancy that, if the child once knew there was no tie of blood between them, she would some day, when her services were most needed, resent the abuses heaped upon her, and go out into the world alone. So when she heard from Mildred herself that she did know,—when the words, “You are not my granny,” were hurled at her defiantly, as it were, she felt as if something she had valued was wrested from her, and she stood a moment uncertain how to act.

But Hepsy Thompson was equal to almost any emergency, and after a little she recovered from her astonishment, and replied:

“So you know it, do you? Well, I’m glad if somebody’s saved me the trouble of telling you how you’ve lived on us all these years. S’posin I was to turn you out-doors, where would you go or who would you go to?”

Mildred’s voice trembled, and the tears gathered in her large, dark eyes, as she answered:

“Go to mother, if I could find her.”

“Your mother!” and a smile of scorn curled Hepsy’s withered lips. “A pretty mother you’ve got. If she’d cast you off when a baby, it’s mighty likely she’d take you now.”

Every word which Hepsy said stung Mildred’s sensitive nature, for she felt that it was true. Her mother had cast her off, and in all the wide world there was no one to care for her, no place she could call her home, save the cheerless gable-roof, and even there she had no right. Once a thought of Richard flitted across her mind, but it soon passed away, for he was probably dead, and if not, he had forgotten her ere this. All her assurance left her, and burying her face in Oliver’s lap, she moaned aloud:

“Oh, Clubs, Clubs, I most wish I was dead. Nobody wants me nowhere. What shall I do?”

“Do?” repeated the harsh voice of Hepsy. “Go home and set yourself to work. Them shoes has got to be stitched before you go to bed, so, budge, I say.”

There was no alternative but submission, and with a swelling heart Mildred followed the hard woman up the hill and along the narrow path and into the cheerless kitchen, where lay the shoes which she must finish ere she could hope for food or rest.

“Let me take them upstairs,” she said; “I can work faster alone,” and as Hepsy made no objection, she hurried to her little room beneath the roof.

Her head was aching dreadfully, and her tears came so fast that she could scarcely see the holes in which to put her needles. The smell of the wax, too, made her sick, while the bright sunlight which came in through the western window made her still more uncomfortable. Tired, hungry, and faint, she made but little progress with her task, and was about giving up in despair, when the door opened cautiously and Oliver came softly in. He was a frail, delicate boy, and since his mother’s death Hepsy had been very careful of him.

“He couldn’t work,” she said; “and there was no need of it either, so long as Mildred was so strong and healthy.”

But Oliver thought differently. Many a time had he in secret helped the little, persecuted girl, and it was for this purpose that he had sought her chamber now.

“Grandmother has gone to Widow Simms’s to stay till nine o’clock,” he said, “and I’ve come up to take your place. Look what I have brought you;” and he held to view a small blackberry pie, which his grandmother had made for him, and which he had saved for the hungry Mildred.

There was no resisting Oliver, and Mildred yielded him her place. Laying her throbbing head upon her scanty pillow, she watched him as he applied himself diligently to her task. He was not a handsome boy; he was too pale,—too thin,—too old-looking for that, but to Mildred, who knew how good he was, he seemed perfectly beautiful, sitting there in the fading sunlight and working so hard for her.

“Clubs,” she said, “you are the dearest boy in all the world, and if I ever find out who I am and happen to be rich, you shall share with me. I’ll give you more than half. I wish I could do something for you now, to show how much I love you.”

The needles were suspended for a moment, while the boy looked through the window far off on the distant hills where the sunlight still was shining.

“I guess I shall be dead then,” he said, “but there’s one thing you could do now, if you would. I don’t mind it in other folks, but somehow it always hurts me when you call me Clubs. I can’t help my bad-shaped feet, and I don’t cry about it as I used to do, nor pray that God would turn them back again, for I know He won’t. I must walk backwards all my life, but, when I get to Heaven, there won’t be any bad boys there to plague me and call me Reel-foot or Clubs! Mother never did; and almost the first thing I remember of her she was kissing my poor crippled feet and dropping tears upon them!”

Mildred forgot to eat her berry pie; forgot her aching head,—forgot everything in her desire to comfort the boy, who, for the first time in his life, had, in her presence, murmured at his misfortune.

“I’ll never call you Clubs again,” she said, folding her arms around his neck. “I love your crooked feet; I love every speck of you, Oliver, and, if I could, I’d give you my feet, though they ain’t much handsomer than yours, they are so big!” and she stuck up a short, fat foot, which, to Oliver, seemed the prettiest he had ever seen.

“No, Milly,” he said, “I’d rather be the deformed one. I want you to grow up handsome, as I most know you will!” and, resuming his task, he looked proudly at the bright little face, which bade fair to be wondrously beautiful.

Mildred did not like to work if she could help it, and, climbing upon the bed, she lay there while Oliver stitched on industriously. But her thoughts were very busy, for she was thinking of the mysterious Richard, wondering if he were really dead, and if he ever had thought of her when afar on the Southern seas. Then, as she remembered having heard that his portrait hung in the drawing-room at Beechwood, she felt a strong desire to see it; and why couldn’t she? Wasn’t she going up there, some day, to ask the Judge if he were not her father? Yes, she was! and so she said again to Oliver, telling him how she meant to be real smart for ever so long, till his grandmother was good-natured and would let her go. She would wear her best calico gown and dimity pantalets, while Oliver should carry his grandfather’s cane, by way of imitating the Judge, who might thus be more impressed with a sense of his greatness.

Although he lived so near, Oliver had never had more than a passing glance of the inside of the great house on the hill, and now that the first surprise was over, he began to feel a pleasing interest in the idea of entering its spacious halls with Mildred. They would go some day, he said, and he tried to frame a good excuse to give the Judge, who might not be inclined to let them in. Mildred, on the contrary, took no forethought as to what she must say; her wits always came when needed, and, while Oliver was thinking, she fell away to sleep, resting so quietly that she did not hear him go below for the bit of tallow candle necessary to complete his task; neither did she see him, when his work was done, bend over her as she slept. Very gently he arranged her pillow, pushed back the hair which had fallen over her eyes, and then, treading softly on his poor warped feet, he left her room and sought his own, where his grandmother found him sleeping, when at nine o’clock she came home from Widow Simms’s.

Mildred’s chamber was visited next, the old lady starting back in much surprise, when, instead of the little figure bending over her bench, she saw the shoes all finished and put away, while Mildred, too, was sleeping,—her lips and hands stained with the berry pie, a part of which lay upon the chair.

“It’s Oliver’s doings,” old Hepsy muttered, while thoughts of his crippled feet rose up in time to prevent an explosion of her wrath.

She could maltreat little Mildred, who had no mar or blemish about her, but she could not abuse a deformed boy, and she went silently down the stairs, leaving Oliver to his dreams of Heaven, where there were no crippled boys, and Mildred to her dreams of Richard, and the time when she would go to Beechwood, and claim Judge Howell for her sire.

CHAPTER IV.
OLIVER AND MILDRED VISIT BEECHWOOD.

Mildred had adhered to her resolution of being smart, as she termed it, and had succeeded so far in pleasing Mrs. Thompson that the old lady reluctantly consented to giving her a half holiday, and letting her go with Oliver to Beechwood one Saturday afternoon. At first Oliver objected to accompanying her, for he could not overcome his dread of the cross Judge, who, having conceived a dislike for Mildred, extended that dislike even to the inoffensive Oliver, always frowning wrathfully at him, and seldom speaking to him a civil word. The girl Mildred the Judge had only seen at a distance, for he never went near the gable-roof, and as he read his prayers at St. Luke’s, while Hepsy screamed hers at the Methodist chapel, there was no chance of his meeting her at church. Neither did he wish to see her, for so many stories had been fabricated concerning himself and the little girl, that he professed to hate the sound of her name. He knew her figure, though, and never did she pass down the avenue, and out into the highway, on the road to school, but he saw her from his window, watching her until out of sight, and wondering to himself who she was, and why that Maine woman had let her alone so long! It was just the same when she came back at night. Judge Howell knew almost to a minute when the blue pasteboard bonnet and spotted calico dress would enter the gate, and hence it was that just so sure as she stopped to pick a flower or stem of box (a thing she seldom failed to do), just so sure was he to scream at the top of his voice:

“Quit that, you trollop, and be off, I say.”

Once she had answered back:

“Yow, yow, yow! who’s afraid of you, old cross-patch!” while through the dusky twilight he had discerned the flourish of a tiny fist!

Nothing pleased the Judge more than grit, as he called it, and shaking his portly sides, he returned to the house, leaving the audacious child to gather as many flowers as she pleased. In spite of his professed aversion, there was, for the Judge, a strange fascination about the little Mildred, who, on one Saturday afternoon, was getting herself in readiness to visit him in his fortress. Great pains she took with her soft, brown hair, brushing it until her arm ached with the exercise, and then smoothing it with her hands until it shone like glass. Aunt Hepsy Thompson was very neat in her household arrangements, and the calico dress which Mildred wore was free from the least taint of dirt, as were the dimity pantalets, the child’s especial pride. A string of blue wax beads was suspended from her neck, and when her little straw bonnet was tied on, her toilet was complete.

Oliver, too, entering into Mildred’s spirit, had spent far more time than usual before the cracked looking-glass which hung upon the wall; but he was ready at last, and issued forth, equipped in his best, even to the cane which Mildred had purloined from its hiding-place, and which she kept concealed until Hepsy’s back was turned, when she adroitly slipped it into his hand and hurried him away.

It was a hazy October day, and here and there a gay-colored leaf was dropping silently from the trees, which grew around Beechwood. In the garden through which the children passed, for the sake of coming first to Rachel’s cabin, many bright autumnal flowers were in blossom; but for once Mildred’s fingers left them untouched. She was too intent upon the house, which, with its numerous chimneys, balconies, and windows, seemed to frown gloomily down upon her.

“What shall you say to the Judge?” Oliver asked, and Mildred answered:

“I don’t know what I shall say, but if he sasses me, it’s pretty likely I shall sass him back.”

Just then Rachel appeared in the door, and, spying the two children as they came through the garden-gate, she shaded her eyes with her tawny hand, to be sure she saw aright.

“Yes, ’tis Mildred Hawkins,” she said; and she cast a furtive glance backward through the wide hall, toward the sitting-room, where the Judge sat, dozing in his willow chair.

“Was it this door, under these steps, that I was left?” asked Mildred in a whisper, but before Oliver could reply Rachel had advanced to meet them.

Mildred was not afraid of her, for the good-natured negress had been kind to her in various ways, and going boldly forward, she said:

“I’ve come to see Judge Howell. Is he at home?”

Rachel looked aghast, and Mildred, thinking she would not state her principal reason for wishing to see him, continued, “I want to see the basket I was brought here in and everything.”

“Do you know then? Who told you?” and Rachel looked inquiringly at Oliver, who answered: “Yes, she knows. They told her at school.”

The fact that she knew gave her, in Rachel’s estimation, some right to come, and motioning her to be very cautious, she said: “The basket is up in the garret. Come still, so as not to wake up the Judge,” and taking off her own shoes by way of example, she led the way through the hall, followed by Oliver and Mildred, the latter of whom could not forbear pausing to look in at the room where the Judge sat unconsciously nodding at her.

“Come away,” whispered Oliver, but Mildred would not move, and she stood gazing at the Judge as if he had been a caged lion.

Just then Finis, who being really the last and youngest, was a spoiled child, yelled lustily for his mother. It was hazardous not to go at his bidding, and telling the children to stand still till she returned, Rachel hurried away.

“Now then,” said Mildred, spying the drawing-room door ajar, “we’ll have a good time by ourselves,” and taking Oliver’s hand, she walked boldly into the parlor, where the family portraits were hanging.

At first her eye was perfectly dazzled with the elegance of which she had never dreamed, but as she became somewhat accustomed to it, she began to look about and make her observations.

“Isn’t this glorious, though! Wouldn’t I like to live here!” and she set her little foot hard down upon the velvet carpet.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” said Oliver in his meekest tone, and Mildred turned just in time to see him bow to what he fancied to be a beautiful young lady smiling down upon them from a gilded frame.

“The portraits! the portraits!” she cried, clapping her hands together, and, in an instant, she stood face to face with Mildred Howell, of the “starry eyes and nut-brown hair.”

But why should that picture affect little Mildred so strangely, causing her to hold her breath and gaze up at it with childish awe. It was very, very beautiful, and hundreds had admired its girlish loveliness; but to Mildred it brought another feeling than that of admiration,—a feeling as if that face had looked at her many a time from the old, cracked glass at home.

“Oliver,” she said, “what is it about the lady? Who is she like, or where have I seen her before?”

Oliver was quite as perplexed as herself; for the features of Mildred Howell seemed familiar even to him. He had somewhere seen their semblance, but he did not think of looking for it in the little girl, whose face grew each moment more and more like the one upon the canvas. And not like that alone, but also like the portrait beyond,—the portrait of Richard Howell. Mildred had not noticed this yet, though the mild, dark eyes seemed watching her every moment, just as another pair of living eyes were watching her from the door.

Mildred’s scream of joy had penetrated to the ears of the sleeping Judge, rousing him from his after-dinner nap, and causing him to listen again for the voice which sounded like an echo from the past. The cry was not repeated, but through the open door he heard distinctly the childish voice, and shaking off his drowsiness he started to see who the intruders could be.

Judge Howell did not believe in the supernatural. Indeed, he scarcely believed in anything, but when he first caught sight of Mildred’s deep, brown eyes, and sparkling face, a strange feeling of awe crept over him, for it seemed as if his only daughter had stepped suddenly from the canvas, and going backward, for a few years, had come up before him the same little child, whose merry laugh and winsome ways had once made the sunlight of his home. The next instant, however, his eye fell upon Oliver, and then he knew who it was. His first impulse was to scream lustily at the intruder, bidding her begone, but there was something in the expression of her face which kept him silent, and he stood watching her curiously, as, with eyes upturned, lips apart, and hands clasped nervously together, she stood gazing at his daughter, and asking her companion who the lady was like.

Oliver could not tell, but to the Judge’s lips the answer sprang, “She’s like you.” Then, as he remembered that others had thought the same, his wrath began to rise; for nothing had ever so offended him as hearing people say that Mildred Hawkins resembled him or his.

“You minx!” he suddenly exclaimed, advancing into the room, “what are you doing here and who are you, hey?”

Oliver colored painfully, and looked about for some safe hiding-place, while Mildred, poising her head a little on one side, unflinchingly replied:

“I am Mildred. Who be you?”

“Did I ever hear such impudence?” muttered the Judge, and striding up to the child, he continued, in his loudest tones, “Who in thunder do you think I am?”

Very calmly Mildred looked him in the face and deliberately replied:

“I think you are my father; anyway, I’ve come up to ask if you ain’t.”

“Great Heavens!” and the Judge involuntarily raised his hand to smite the audacious Mildred, but before the blow descended his eyes met those of Richard, and though it was a picture he looked at, there was something in that picture which stayed the act, and his hand came down very gently upon the soft brown hair of the child who was so like both son and daughter.

“Say,” persisted Mildred, emboldened by this very perceptible change in his demeanor, “be you my father, and if you ain’t, who is? Is he?” And she pointed toward Richard, whose mild, dark eyes seemed to Oliver to smile approvingly upon her.

Never before in his life had the Judge been so uncertain as to whether it were proper to scold or to laugh. The idea of that little girl’s coming up to Beechwood, and claiming him for her father was perfectly preposterous, and yet in spite of himself there was about her something he could not resist,—she seemed near to him,—so near that for one brief instant the thought flitted across his brain that he would keep her there with him, and not let her go back to the gable-roof where rumor said she was far from being happy. Then as he remembered all that had been said, and how his adopting her would give rise to greater scandal, he steeled his heart against her and replied, in answer to her questions, “You haven’t any father, and never had. Your mother was a good-for-nothing jade from Maine, who left you here because she knew I had money, and she thought maybe I’d keep you and make you my heir. But she was grandly mistaken. I sent you off then and I’ll send you off again, so begone you baggage, and don’t you let me catch you stealing any more flowers, or calling me names, either, such as ‘old cross-patch.’ I ain’t deaf; I heard you.”

“You called me names first, and you are a heap older than I am,” Mildred answered, moving reluctantly toward the door, and coming to a firm stand as she reached the threshold.

“What are you waiting for?” asked the Judge, and Mildred replied, “I ain’t in any hurry, and I shan’t go until I see that basket I was brought here in.”

“The plague you won’t,” returned the Judge, now growing really angry. “We’ll see who’s master; and taking her by the shoulder, he led her through the hall, down the steps, and out into the open air, followed by Oliver, who having expected some such denouement, was not greatly disappointed.

“Let’s go back,” he said, as he saw indications of what he called, “one of Milly’s tantrums.” But Milly would not stir until she had given vent to her wrath, looking and acting exactly like the Judge, who, from an upper window, was watching her with mingled feelings of amusement and admiration.

“She’s spunky, and no mistake,” he thought, “but I’ll be hanged if I don’t like the spitfire. Where the plague did she get those eyes, and that mouth so much like Mildred and Richard? She bears herself proudly, too, I will confess,” he continued, as he saw her at last cross the yard and join Rachel, who, having found him in the parlor when she came back from quieting Finn, had stolen away unobserved.

Twice the Judge turned from the window, and as often went back again, watching Mildred, as she passed slowly through the garden, and half wishing she would gather some of his choicest flowers, so that he could call after her and see again the angry flash of her dark eyes. But Mildred did not meddle with the flowers, and when her little straw bonnet disappeared from view, the Judge began to pace the floor, wondering at the feeling of loneliness which oppressed him, and the voice which whispered that he had turned from his door a second time the child who had a right to a place by his hearthstone and a place in his heart, even though he were not her father.

CHAPTER V.
LAWRENCE THORNTON AND HIS ADVICE.

The fact that Mildred had dared go up to Beechwood and claim Judge Howell as her father, did not tend in the least to improve her situation, for regarding it as proof that she would, if she could, abandon the gable-roof, Aunt Hepsy became more unamiable than ever, keeping the child from school, and imposing upon her tasks which never could have been performed but for Oliver’s assistance. Deep and dark were the waters through which Mildred was passing now, and in the coming future she saw no ray of hope, but behind that heavy cloud the sun was shining bright and only a little way beyond, the pastures lay all green and fair.

But no such thoughts as these intruded themselves upon her mind on the Sabbath afternoon when, weary and dejected, she stole from the house, unobserved even by Oliver, and wended her way to the river bank. It was a warm November day, and seating herself upon the withered grass beneath the sycamore, she watched the faded leaves as they dropped into the stream and floated silently away. In the quiet Sabbath hush there was something very soothing to her irritated nerves, and she ere long fell asleep, resting her head upon the twisted roots, which made almost as soft a pillow as the scanty one of hen’s feathers on which she was accustomed to repose.

She had not lain there long when a footstep broke the stillness, and a boy, apparently about fourteen or fifteen years of age, drew near, pausing suddenly as his eye fell upon the sleeping child.

“Belongs to some one of the Judge’s poor tenants, I dare say,” he said to himself, glancing at her humble dress, and he was about passing her by, when something in her face attracted his attention, and he stopped for a nearer view.

“Who is she like?” he said, and he ran over in his mind a list of his city friends, but among them all there was no face like this one. “Where have I seen her?” he continued, and determining not to leave the spot until the mystery was solved, he sat down upon a stone near by. “She sleeps long; she must be tired,” he said at last, as the sun drew nearer to the western horizon, and there were still no signs of waking. “I know she’s mighty uncomfortable with her neck on that sharp point,” he continued, and drawing near he substituted himself for the gnarled roots which had hitherto been Mildred’s pillow.

Something the little girl said in her sleep of Oliver, whom she evidently fancied was with her, and then her brown head nestled down in the lap of the handsome boy, who smoothed her hair gently, while he wondered more and more whom she was like. Suddenly it came to him, and he started so quickly that Mildred awoke, and with a cry of alarm at the sight of an entire stranger, sprang to her feet as if she would run away. But the boy held her back, saying pleasantly:

“Not so fast, my little lady. I haven’t held you till my arms ache for nothing. Come here and tell me who you are.”

His voice and manner both were winning, disarming Mildred of all fear, and sitting down, as he bade her do, she answered:

“I am Mildred,—and that’s all.”

“Mildred,—and that’s all!” he repeated. “You surely have some other name! Who is your father?”

“I never had any, Judge Howell says, and my mother put me in a basket, and left me up at Beechwood, ever so long ago. It thundered and lightened awfully, and I wish the thunder had killed me before I was as tired and sorry as I am now. There’s nobody to love me anywhere but Richard and Oliver, and Richard, I guess, is dead, while Oliver has crippled feet, and if he grows to be a man he can’t earn enough for me and him, and I’ll have to stay with grandmother till I die. Oh, I wish it could be now; and I’ve held my breath a lot of times to see if I couldn’t stop breathing, but I always choke and come to life!”

All the boy’s curiosity was roused. He had heard before of the infant left at Judge Howell’s, and he knew now that she sat there before him,—a much-abused, neglected child, with that strange look upon her face which puzzled him just as it had many an older person.

“Poor little girl,” he said. “Where do you live, and who takes care of you? Tell me all about it;” and adroitly leading her on, he learned the whole story of her life,—how since the woman died she once thought was her mother she had scarcely known a happy day. Old Hepsy was so cross, putting upon her harder tasks than she could well perform,—beating her often, and tyrannizing over her in a thousand different ways.

“I used to think it was bad enough when I thought she was related,” said Mildred, “but now I know she hain’t no right, it seems a hundred times worse,—and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’d run away,” suggested the boy; and Mildred replied:

“Run where? I was never three miles from here in my life.”

“Run to Boston,” returned the boy. “That’s where I live. Cousin Geraldine wants a waiting-maid, and though she’d be mighty overbearing, father would be good, I guess, and so would Lilian,—she’s just about your size.”

“Who is Lilian?” Mildred asked, and he replied:

“I call her cousin, though she isn’t at all related. Father’s sister Mary married Mr. Veille, and died when Geraldine was born. Ever so many years after uncle married again and had Lilian, but neither he nor his second wife lived long, and as father was appointed guardian for Geraldine and Lilian, they have lived with us ever since. Geraldine is proud, but Lilian is a pretty little thing. You’ll like her if you come.”

“Should you be there?” Mildred asked, much more interested in the handsome boy than in Lilian Veille.

“I shall be there till I go to college,” returned the boy; “but Geraldine wouldn’t let you have much to say to me, she’s so stuck up, and feels so big. The boys at school told me once that she meant I should marry Lilian, but I sha’n’t if I don’t want to.”

Mildred did not answer immediately, but sat thinking intently, with her dark eyes fixed upon the stream running at her feet. Something in her attitude reminded the boy a second time of the resemblance which had at first so impressed him, and turning her face more fully toward him, he said:

“Do you know that you look exactly as my mother did?”

Mildred started eagerly. The old burning desire to know who she was, or whence she came, was awakened, and grasping the boy’s hand, she said:

“Maybe you’re my brother, then. Oh, I wish you was! Come down to the brook, where the sun shines; we can see our faces there and know if we look alike.”

She had grasped his arm and was trying to draw him forward, when he dashed all her newly-formed hopes by saying:

“It is my step-mother you resemble; she that was the famous beauty, Mildred Howell.”

“That pretty lady in the frame?” said Mildred, rather sadly. “Widow Simms says I look like her. And was she your mother?”

“She was father’s second wife,” returned the boy, “and I am Lawrence Thornton, of Boston.”

Seeing that the name, “Lawrence Thornton,” did not impress the little girl as he fancied it would, the boy proceeded to give her an outline history of himself and family, which last, he said, was one of the oldest, and richest, and most aristocratic in the city.

“Have you any sisters?” Mildred asked, and Lawrence replied:

“I had a sister once, a good deal older than I am. I don’t remember her much, for when I was five years old,—that’s ten years ago,—she ran off with her music teacher, Mr. Harding, and never came back again; and about a year later, we heard that she was dead, and that there was a girl-baby that died with her——”

“Yes; but what of the beautiful lady, your mother?” chimed in Mildred, far more interested in Mildred Howell than in the baby reported to have died with Lawrence’s sister Helen.

Lawrence Thornton did not know that the far-famed “starry eyes” of sweet Mildred Howell had wept bitter tears ere she consented to do her father’s bidding and wed a man many years her senior, and whose only daughter was exactly her own age; neither did he know how from the day she wore her bridal robes, looking a very queen, she had commenced to fade,—for Autumn and May did not go well together, even though the former were gilded all over with gold. He only had a faint remembrance that she was to him a playmate rather than a mother, and that she seemed to love to have him kiss her and caress her fair round cheek far better than his father. So he told this last to Mildred, and told her, too, how his father and Judge Howell both had cried when they stood together by her coffin.

“And Richard,” said Mildred,—“was Richard there?”

Lawrence did not know, for he was scarcely four years old when his step-mother died.

“But I have seen Richard Howell,” he said; “I saw him just before he went away. He came to Boston to see Cousin Geraldine, I guess, for I’ve heard since that Judge Howell wanted him to marry her when she got big enough. She was only thirteen then, but that’s a way the Howells and Thorntons have of marrying folks a great deal older than themselves. You don’t catch me at any such thing, though. How old are you, Mildred?”

Lawrence Thornton hadn’t the slightest motive in asking this question, neither did he wait to have it answered; for, observing that the sun was really getting very low in the heavens, he arose, and, telling Mildred that dinner would be waiting for him at Beechwood, where he was now spending a few days, he bade her good-by, and walked rapidly away.

As far as she could see him Mildred followed him with her eyes, and when, at last, a turn in the winding path hid him from her view, she resumed her seat upon the twisted roots and cried, for the world to her was doubly desolate now that he was gone.

“He was so bright, so handsome,” she said, “and he looked so sorry like when he said ‘poor little Milly!’ Oh, I wish he would stay with me always!”

Then she remembered what he had said to her of going to Boston, and she resolved that when next old Hepsy’s treatment became harsher than she could bear, she would surely follow his advice and run away to Boston, perhaps, and be waiting-maid to Miss Geraldine Veille. She had no idea what the duties of a waiting-maid were, but no situation could be worse than her present one, and then Lawrence would be there a portion of the time at least. Yes, she would certainly run away, she said; nor was it very long ere she had an opportunity of carrying her resolution into effect, for as the weather grew colder, Hepsy, who was troubled with rheumatism and corns, became intolerably cross and one day punished Mildred for a slight offense far more severely than she had ever done before.

“I can’t stay,—I won’t stay,—I’ll go this very night!” thought Mildred, as blow after blow fell upon her uncovered neck and arms.

Then as her eye fell upon the white-faced Oliver, who apparently suffered more than herself, she felt a moment’s indecision. Oliver would miss her,—Oliver would cry when he found that she was gone, but Lawrence Thornton would get him a place as chore boy somewhere near her, and then they would be so happy in the great city, where Hepsy’s tongue could not reach them. She did not think that money would be needed to carry her to Boston, for she had been kept so close at home that she knew little of the world, and she fancied that she had only to steal away to the depot unobserved, and the rest would follow, as a matter of course. The conductor would take her when she told him of Hepsy, as she meant to do, and once in the city anybody would tell her where Lawrence Thornton lived. This being satisfactorily settled, her next step was to pin up in a cotton handkerchief her best calico dress and pantalets, for if the Lady Geraldine were proud as Lawrence Thornton had said, she would want her waiting-maid to look as smart as possible.

Accordingly the faded frock and dimity pantalets, which had not been worn since that memorable visit to Beechwood, were made into a bundle, Mildred thinking the while how she would put them on in the woods, where there was no danger of being detected by old Hepsy, who was screaming for her to come down and fill the kettle.

“It’s the last time I shall do it,” thought Mildred, as she descended the stairs and began to make her usual preparation for the supper, and the little girl’s step was lighter at the prospect of her release from bondage.

But every time she looked at Oliver, who was suffering from a sick headache, the tears came to her eyes, and she was more than once tempted to give up her wild project of running away.

“Dear Oliver,” she whispered, when at last the supper was over, the dishes washed, the floor swept, and it was almost time for her to go. “Dear Oliver,” and going over to where he sat, she pressed her hand upon his throbbing temples,—“you are the dearest, kindest brother that ever was born, and you must remember how much I love you, if anything should happen.”

Oliver did not heed the last part of her remark, he only knew he liked to have her warm hand on his forehead, it made him feel better, and placing his own thin fingers over it he kept it there a long time, while Mildred glanced nervously at the clock, whose constantly moving minute-hand warned her it was time to go. Immediately after supper Hepsy had taken her knitting and gone to spend the evening with Widow Simms, and in her absence Mildred dared do things she would otherwise have left undone. Kneeling down by Oliver and laying her head upon his knee, she said:

“If I should die or go away forever, you’ll forgive me, won’t you, for striking you in the barn that time, and laughing at your feet. I was mad, or I shouldn’t have done it, I’ve cried about it so many times,” and she laid her hand caressingly upon the poor, deformed feet turned backward beneath her chair.

“Oh, I never think of that,” answered Oliver; “and if you were to die, I should want to die, too, ’twould be so lonesome without little Milly.”

Poor Milly! She thought her heart would burst, and nothing but a most indomitable will could have sustained her; kissing him several times she arose, and making some excuse, hurried away up to her room. It took but a moment to put on her bonnet and shawl, and stealing noiselessly down the stairs, she passed out into the winter darkness, pausing for a moment beneath the uncurtained window, to gaze at Oliver, sitting there alone, the dim fire-light shining on his patient face and falling on his hair. He did not see the brown eyes filled with tears, nor the forehead pressed against the pane, neither did he hear the whispered words, “Good-by, darling Oliver, good-by,” but he thought the room was darker, while the shadows in the corner seemed blacker than before, and he listened eagerly for the footsteps coming down, but listened in vain, for in the distance, with no company save the gray December clouds and her own bewildered thoughts, a little figure was hurrying away to the far off city,—and away to Lawrence Thornton.

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT CAME OF IT.