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.”