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.