l to _you_ for
the property my father left me?"

"Why should you be thankful to me?" rejoined Mrs. Ochiltree with
querulous indignation. "You'd better ask why _shouldn't_ you be
thankful to me. What have I not done for you?"

"Yes, Aunt Polly, I know you've done a great deal. You reared me in
your own house when I had been cast out of my father's; you have been a
second mother to me, and I am very grateful,--you can never say that I
have not shown my gratitude. But if you have done anything else for me,
I wish to know it. Why should I thank you for my inheritance?"

"Why should you thank me? Well, because I drove that woman and her brat
away."

"But she had no right to stay, Aunt Polly, after father died. Of course
she had no moral right before, but it was his house, and he could keep
her there if he chose. But after his death she surely had no right."

"Perhaps not so surely as you think,--if she had not been a negro. Had
she been white, there might have been a difference. When I told her to
go, she said"--

"What did she say, Aunt Polly," demanded Olivia eagerly.

It seemed for a moment as though Mrs. Ochiltree would speak no further:
but her once strong will, now weakened by her bodily infirmities,
yielded to the influence of her niece's imperious demand.

"I'll tell you the whole story," she said, "and then you'll know what
I did for you and yours." Mrs. Ochiltree's eyes assumed an
introspective expression, and her story, as it advanced, became as
keenly dramatic as though memory had thrown aside the veil of
intervening years and carried her back directly to the events which she
now described.

"Your father," she said, "while living with that woman, left home one
morning the picture of health. Five minutes later he tottered into the
house groaning with pain, stricken unto death by the hand of a just God,
as a punishment for his sins."

Olivia gave a start of indignation, but restrained herself.

"I was at once informed of what had happened, for I had means of knowing
all that took place in the household. Old Jane--she was younger
then--had come with you to my house; but her daughter remained, and
through her I learned all that went on.

"I hastened immediately to the house, entered without knocking, and
approached Mr. Merkell's bedroom, which was on the lower floor and
opened into the hall. The door was ajar, and as I stood there for a
moment I heard your father's voice.

"'Listen, Julia,' he was sa