Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/320

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recovering the still fainting and exhausted girl.

"Oh, tell me!" said the father, who was supporting his child in his arms—looking up into Goody Campbell's face as she too bent over her darling—"Oh, tell me those blessed words again—tell me that this is indeed the child of my beloved Alice—my precious wife."

"An' wa' she your wife—in varry deed?" asked the still doubting listener, with her keen, penetrating eyes fixed full upon his face.

"Was she my wife? Good heavens! yes—ten thousand times yes! who dares to question it? Yes! my sainted Alice was my dear and honored wife; did you—did any one ever doubt it?"

"Yes," said Elsie Campbell, meekly, "I did doot it—I wa' told it wa' a sham marriage, an' I believed it; I thought you had done me an' my dead a mighty wrong, an' I could na' forgi'e it. But I see now that I hae done ye a mighty wrong, an' I dare na' ask ye to forgi'e me."

"I can forgive any thing to-day," said the