Bolton sighed deeply, and continued in a strain whose diffusiveness at last became perceptible to Miss Kilburn through her own humiliation. “There's some in every community that's bound to complain, I don't care what you do to accommodate 'em; and what I done, I done as much to stop their clack as anything, and give him the right sort of a start off, an' I guess I did. But Mis' Bolton she didn't know but what you'd look at it in the light of a libbutty, and I didn't know but what you _would_ think I no business to done it.” He seemed to be addressing a question to her, but she only replied with a dazed frown, and Bolton was obliged to go on. “I didn't let him room in your part of the house; that is to say, not sleep there; but I thought, as you was comin' home, and I better be airin' it up some, anyway, I might as well let him set in the old Judge's room. If you think it was more than I had a right to do, I'm willin' to pay for it. Git up!” Bolton turned fully round toward his horses, to hide the workings of emotion in his face, and shook the reins like a desperate man. “What _are_ you talking about, Mr. Bolton?” cried Miss Kilburn. “_Whom_ are you talking about?” Bolton answered, with a kind of violence, “Mr. Peck; I took him to board, first off.” “You took him to board?” “Yes. I know it wa'n't just accordin' to the letter o' the law, and the old Judge was always pootty p'tic'lah. But I've took care of the place goin' on twenty years now, and I hain't never had a chick nor a child in it before. The child,” he continued, partly turning his face round again, and beginning to look Miss Kilburn in the eye, “wa'n't one to touch anything, anyway, and we kep' her in our part all the while; Mis' Bolton she couldn't seem to let her out of her sight, she got so fond of her, and she used to follow me round among the hosses like a kitten. I declare, I _miss_ her.” Bolton's face, the colour of one of the lean ploughed fields of Hatboro', and deeply furrowed, lighted up with real feeling, which he tried to make go as far in the work of reconciling Miss Kilburn as if it had been factitious. “But I don't understand,” she said. “What child are you talking about?” “Mr. Peck's.” “Was he married?” she asked, with displeasure, she did not know why. “Well, yes, he _had_ been,” answered Bolton. “But she'd be'n in the asylum ever since the child was born.” “Oh,” said Miss Kilburn, with relief; and she fell back upon the seat from which she had started forward.