“In the years to come, when you are old and lonesome, you’ll be sorry for what you’ve said to-night.” Those were Richard’s words, while Mildred’s were: “You’ll be sorry if you turn me off.” It would seem that the son, over whose fate a dark mystery hung, was there in spirit, pleading for the helpless child, while with him was another Mildred, and looking through the eyes of brown so much like her own, she said, “Take her father, you will need her some time!” And so, not merely because Mildred Hawkins asked him to do it, but because of the unseen influence which urged him on, the Judge drew the little girl closer to his side, and parting back her rich, brown hair, said to her pleasantly, “You may stay to-night, and to-morrow night, and if I don’t find you troublesome, perhaps you may stay for good.” Mildred had not looked for so easy a conquest, and this unexpected kindness wrung from her eyes great tears, which rolled silently down her cheeks. “What are you crying for?” asked the Judge. “You are not obliged to stay. You can go back to Hepsy any minute,—now, if you want. Shall I call Rachel to hold the lantern?” He made a motion toward the bell-rope, while Mildred, in an agony of terror, seized his arm, telling him “she was only crying for joy; that she’d die before she’d go back!” and adding fiercely, as she saw he had really rung the bell: “If you send me away I’ll set your house on fire!” The Judge smiled quietly at this threat, and when Rachel appeared in answer to his ring, he said, “Open the register in the chamber above, and see that the bed is all right, then bring us some apples and nuts,—and,—wait till I get done, can’t you,—bring us that box of prunes. Do you love prunes, child?” “Yes, sir, though I don’t know what they be,” sobbed Mildred, through the hands she had clasped over her face when she thought she must go back. She knew she was not going now, and her eyes shone like diamonds as they flashed upon the Judge a look of gratitude. It wasn’t lonesome now in that handsome library where Mildred sat, eating prune after prune, and apple after apple, while the Judge sat watching her with an immense amount of satisfaction, and, thinking to himself how, on the morrow, if he did not change his mind, he would inquire the price of feminine dry goods, a thing he had not done in years. In his abstraction he even forgot that the clock was striking nine, and, half an hour later, found him still watching Mildred, and marvelling at her enormous appetite for nuts and prunes. But he remembered, at last, that it was his bed time, and, again ringing for Rachel, he bade her take the little girl upstairs.