* * * * * "There! he's gi'n it up!" cried Hattie, still watching the minister. "He's turnin' down the path. My land! he's headed this way. He's comin' here. You beat up that cushion, an' throw open the best-room door. My soul! if your grandpa's goin' to set the whole town by the ears, I wisht he'd come home an' fight his own battles!" Hattie did not look at her young daughter; but if she had looked, she might have been amazed. Mary stood firm as iron; she was more than ever a chip o' the old block. When the young minister had somewhat weakly climbed the two front steps, he elected not to sit in the best room, for he was a little chilly, and would like the sun. Presently he was installed in the new cane-backed rocker, and Mrs. Oldfield had offered him some currant wine. "Though I dunno's you would," said she, anxiously flaunting a principle righteous as his own. "I s'pose you're teetotal." The minister would not have wine, and he could not stay. "I've really come on business," said he. "Do you know anything about Mr. Oldfield?" So strong was the family conviction that Nicholas had involved them in disgrace, that Mary glanced up fiercely, and her mother gave an apologetic cough. "Well," said Young Nick's Hattie, "I dunno's I know anything particular about father." "Where is he, I mean," asked the minister. "I want to see him. I've got to." "Gran'ther's gone away," announced Mary, looking up at him with hot and loyal eyes. "We don't know where." Her fingers trembled, and she lost her stitch. She was furious with herself for not being calmer. It seemed as if gran'ther had a right to demand it of her. The minister bent his brows impatiently. "Why, I depended on seeing Mr. Oldfield," said he, with the fractiousness of a man recently ill. "This sickness of mine has put me back tremendously. I've got to make the address, and I don't know what to say. I meant to read town records and hunt up old stories; and then when I was sick I thought, 'Never mind! Mr. Oldfield will have it all at his tongue's end.' And now he isn't here, and I'm all at sea without him." This was perhaps the first time that Young Nick's Hattie had ever looked upon her father's pursuits with anything but a pitying eye. A frown of perplexity grew between her brows. Her brain ached in expanding. Mary leaned forward, her face irradiated with pure delight. "Why, yes," said she, at once accepting the minister for a friend, "gran'ther could tell you, if he was here. He knows everything."