Hall?"

"I shouldn't have thought he was vindictive. That is not at all the
character he bears."

"No," the sergeant said, "I hear him spoken well of; but I have seen,
in other cases, men, who have had the name of being pleasant and
generous, were yet tyrants and brutes in their own family. I judge him
as I found him--a hard hearted, tyrannical, vindictive father. I think
I had better not see him myself. We have never met. I have never set
eyes on him save here in church; but he regarded me as responsible for
the folly of his son. He wrote me a violent letter, and said I had
inveigled the lad into the marriage; and although I might have told him
it was false, I did not answer his letter, for the mischief was done
then, and I hoped he would cool down in time.

"However, that is all past now; but I don't wish to see him. I was
thinking of letting the child go to the Hall by herself, and drop in
suddenly upon him. She is very like her father, and may possibly take
his heart by storm."

"Yes," Mrs. Walsham assented. "Now I know who she is, I can see the
likeness strongly. Yes; I should think that that would be the best way.
People often yield to a sudden impulse, who will resist if approached
formally or from a distance. But have you any reason to suppose that he
will not receive her? Did he refuse at first to undertake the charge of
the child? Does he even know that she is alive? It may be that, all
these years, he has been anxious to have her with him, and that you
have been doing him injustice altogether."

"I never thought of it in that light," the sergeant said, after a
pause. "He never came near his son when he lay dying, never wrote a
line in answer to his letters. If a man could not forgive his son when
he lay dying, how could he care for a grandchild he had never seen?"

"That may be so, Sergeant Wilks; but his son's death certainly broke
him down terribly, and it may be that he will gladly receive his
granddaughter.

"But there are the young ones back again. I will think over what you
have been telling me, and we can discuss it again tomorrow."

Chapter 4: The Squire's Granddaughter.

The following day another council was held, and Mrs. Walsham told the
sergeant that, on thinking it over, she had concluded that the best way
would be to take the old butler at the Hall, who had served the family
for forty-five years, into their confidence, and to ask him to arrange
how best Aggie might be introduced