“I trust you will soon return to Newbury, or permit me to see you in Jefferson, and when the past may” ("I don’t care about wading the Chagrin, Judge, and helping your daughter out of the woods was no more than leading out any other man’s daughter, and I don’t want to hear more of either.  Just let me alone.”) “be atoned for.  I need not say that my wife unites with me in gratitude, and a hearty wish to be permitted to aid you; nor how anxious we are to learn the details of your finding our daughter, all of which is a profound mystery to us.

“Sincerely yours,

“EDWARD MARKHAM.”

There was a postscript to the Judge’s, instead of Julia’s, and Bart looked at it two or three times with indifference, and walked up and down the room with a sore, angry feeling that he did not care to understand the source of, nor yet to control.  “Very pretty letters! very well said!  Why did they care to say anything to me?  When I came away they might have known—­but then, who and what am I?  Why the devil shouldn’t they snub me one day and pat me on the head the next?  And I ought to be glad to be kicked, and glad to be thanked for being kicked—­only I’m not—–­though I don’t know why!  Well, this is the last of it; in my own good time—­or somebody’s time, good or bad—­I will walk in upon my Lord Judge, my discriminating Lady the Mother, and the Lady Julia, and hear them say their pieces without danger of misapprehension.”  And his eye fell again on the Judge’s postscript.  Reads: 

“Before I called at your mother’s on that morning, I set apart the chestnut ‘Silver-tail,’ well caparisoned, as your property.  I thought it a fitting way in which one gentleman might indicate his appreciation of another.  I knew you would appreciate him; I hoped he would be useful to you.  He is your property, whether you will or no, and will be held subject to your order, and the fact that he is yours will not diminish the care he will receive.  May I know your pleasure in reference to him?

“E.M.”

This found the weak place, or one of the weak places, in Bart’s nature.  The harshness and bitterness of his feelings melted out of his heart, and left him to answer his letters in a spirit quite changed from that which had just possessed him.

To Julia he wrote: 

“JEFFERSON, April 11, 1838.

“Miss JULIA MARKHAM: 

“Yours has just reached me.  I am so little used to expressions of kindness that yours seem to mock me like irony.  You did not choose to become involved in discomfort and danger, nor were you left to elect who should aid you, and I can endure the reflection that you might prefer to thank some other.