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.