zactly!" ejaculated the peddler, setting down his pack and himself
taking a chair, preparatory to a long talk. "Egzactly; I knowed him
like a book. Old Squire Hampleton, the biggest man in Meriden, and you
don't say his last wife, that tall, handsome gal, was your darter?"

"Yes, she was my daughter," answered Hagar, her whole face glowing
with the interest she felt in talking for the first time in her life
with one who had known her daughter's husband, Maggie's father. "You
knew her. You have seen her?" she continued; and Martin answered,
"Seen her a hundred times, I'll bet. Anyhow, I sold her the weddin'
gown; and now, I think on't, she favored you. She was a likely person,
and I allus thought that proud sister of his'n, the Widder Warner,
might have been in better business than takin' them children away as
she did, because he married his hired gal. But it's as well for them,
I s'pose, particularly for the boy, who is one of the fust young men
in Wooster now. Keeps a big store!"

"Warner, Warner!" interrupted old Hagar, the nameless terror of the
night before creeping again into her heart. "Whose name did you say
was Warner?"

"The hull on 'em, boy, girl, and all, is called Warner now--one Rose,
and t'other Henry," answered the peddler, perfectly delighted with the
interest manifested by his auditor, who, grasping at the bedpost and
moving her hand rapidly before her eyes, as if to clear away a mist
which had settled there, continued, "I remember now, Hester told me of
the children; but one, she said, was a stepchild--that was the boy,
wasn't it?" and her wild, black eyes had in them a look of unutterable
anxiety, wholly incomprehensible to the peddler, who, instead of
answering her question said: "What ails you woman? Your face is as
white as a piece of paper?"

"Thinking of Hester always affects me so," she answered; and
stretching her hands beseechingly towards him, she entreated him to
say if Henry were not the stepchild.

"No marm, he warn't," answered the peddler, who, like a great many
talkative people, pretended to know more than he really did, and who
in this particular instance was certainly mistaken. "I can tell you
egzactly how that is: Henry was the son of Mr. Hampleton's first
marriage--Henry Hampleton. The second wife, the one your darter lived
with, was the Widder Warner, and had a little gal, Rose, when she
married Mr. Hampleton. This Widder Warner's husband's brother married
Mr. Hampleton's sis