“Yes, and he meant to tell me when we reached New York. He had a habit of putting off things, and he put that off, and when he was dying on the ship he tried to tell me so hard. I know now what he meant when he said: ‘When it comes to you forgive me and love me just the same;’ and I do—I will—and I’ll stand by father through everything;” and Reinette’s eyes, where the great tears were standing, fairly blazed, as she defended her dead father; and her grandma cried, too, a little, but her animosity toward the Hethertons was so great and this silence of her son-in law seemed so like a fresh insult, that she was ready to fire up in an instant, and when Reinette said to her, “It is very painful for me to hear it, and still I wish you to tell me all I ought to know of mother and father both. Why did you say they ran away?” she began as far back as the first time her daughter Margaret handed Fred Hetherton a glass of beer across the counter, and in her own peculiar way, told the story of the courtship and marriage, ending with a graphic description of her call on Gen. Hetherton, who turned her from his house, and bade her never enter it again. “And I never have till to-day,” she said, “when I wouldn’t wonder if he’d stir in his coffin if he knew I was here, seein’ he felt so much above me. If I’d been a man, I b’lieve I’d a horse-whipped him, for there’s fight in my make-up. My two brothers, Jim and Will Martin, were the prize-fighters of the town, and could lick any two men single-handed. They are dead now, both on ’em—died in the war, fightin’ for their country, and I s’pose it’s better so than if they’d lived to do wus.” “Yes, oh, yes,” Reinette said, faintly, neither knowing what she said or what she meant, knowing only that every nerve was quivering with excitement and pain, and that she felt half crazed and stunned with all she had heard of the father and mother she had held so high.