“This beautiful little Eva is my dead wife’s niece, and so like her that it gave me quite a turn when I looked into her face. Why should I go into Harrison County at all to harrow up my mind with old memories? Why should I trouble that old man that hates me? I am rich enough already. Let the mortgage go for the sake of little Eva’s beautiful eyes!” and he sighed. CHAPTER XIII. THE DEATH OF GRAN’THER. “Now that I’ve signed the will that will make them rich when I am dead, my heartless gran’darters don’t care how soon I’m gone! And I don’t care neither! ’Tis lonesome lying a-bed these weary weeks all alone ’cept when they come to wait on me with sour looks and short words. And the neighbors, they ain’t over-sociable, coming in to watch with the sick! Sometimes I think ’tain’t their fault, mebbe, for I overheard Patty saying downstairs at the kitchen door to Neighbor Miller: ‘Gran’ther ain’t feeling well enough to see comp’ny to-day. He’s most always dozing, and would ruther be alone!’ She knows ’tis a story. I’m dretful lonesome all the time, and I can’t sleep much for the aching in my bones!” groaned Gran’ther Groves, turning over restlessly in his bed, staring with dim eyes at the flickering shadows of the firelight on the wall. He was bedridden now, but Miss Ruttencutter and the twins had left him alone and gone in the Jersey wagon, with the new chore boy for driver, to a tawdry circus that had pitched its tents in the neighborhood, and was delighting the rustic heart. “You will be asleep, gran’ther, and not miss us,” consoled Lydia, who had the kindest heart of the three. He had begged to have his dog for company, but they said it must be left in the yard to keep off tramps. He was very weak and childish now, and the tears came into his eyes as he sobbed: “Cain’t even have my dog no more! They are mistresses of everything now, and I’m to blame for it all. If I hadn’t druv little Eva away I shouldn’t be laying here so lonesome, to die by myself. How good she always stayed with me, and laffed and talked so sweet, same like I was some young spark she thought all the world of! Never give me one cross word in her hull life, didn’t little Eva! Yet I was blind ’nuff and fool ’nuff to make that tur’ble mistake of my whole life and run her off, poor innocent lamb! They egged me on, Tab and the twins, that’s what they did! Doctor Binks said he knowed she wa’n’t guilty, and made me see it, too! He said: ‘There’s a devil’s job behind that Dan Ellis’ skulking, and I’ll cut his heart out if he don’t confess the instigator!’ Them’s his very words, and he meant ’em, too! But Dan runned away, and Eva went out of her mind, and I’m dying and will meet her mother and grandma soon, and when they ask me how’s their sweet little Eva, oh, Lord, how can I answer and tell ’em what I done?”