grimly.

"Yes, he's poor," returned the girl defiantly.

"Then your father's name is Mullins?" asked Bill.

"It's not Mullins. I--I--took that name," she hesitated, with her first
exhibition of self-consciousness.

"Wot IS his name?"

"Eli Hemmings."

A smile of relief and significance went round the circle. The fame of
Eli or "Skinner" Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had passed
even beyond Galloper's Ridge.

"The step that you're taking, Miss Mullins, I need not tell you, is
one of great gravity," said Judge Thompson, with a certain paternal
seriousness of manner, in which, however, we were glad to detect a
glaring affectation; "and I trust that you and your affianced have fully
weighed it. Far be it from me to interfere with or question the natural
affections of two young people, but may I ask you what you know of
the--er--young gentleman for whom you are sacrificing so much, and,
perhaps, imperiling your whole future? For instance, have you known him
long?"

The slightly troubled air of trying to understand,--not unlike the
vague wonderment of childhood,--with which Miss Mullins had received the
beginning of this exordium, changed to a relieved smile of comprehension