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.