“I don’t think he was unkind; but your mother couldn’t bear him, and it was when he tried to make her marry Dick Brunsen that she revolted openly, and wouldn’t stay at the store when Doss came home, but always used to come over and sleep at our house, where she met the preacher, your father.”
“Dick Brunsen?” said Nell, faintly. She was thinking of the man who came to the Lone House for succour the day that Pip got hurt, and who had said that his name was Dick Bronson.
“Yes; Dick Brunsen was a widower with one child, a boy of five or six, and he was called Dick too. Brunsen was very thick with Doss Umpey at the time; they two and Ned Logan were inseparables, until that scandal about robbing the stage, then, of course, Logan had to go to prison, and the other two quarrelled, though, if strict justice had been done, the three of them would have gone to penal servitude together.”
“Tell me about it,” murmured Nell; and there was a throb of pleasure at her heart because Doss Umpey had been only stepfather to her mother.
“It was believed, only it couldn’t be proved, that Brunsen planned the robberies, and paid Logan to carry them out, Doss Umpey being, of course, a consenting party. This is how it was done. Brunsen, who lived in a big house at Mutley, pretending to be a rich man, used to order all sorts of expensive goods from the city to be paid for on delivery; then they would be sent on from the depot at George Creek by the stage, and always on those occasions the stage was held up and robbed when crossing the iron plains, which was a desperately lonely bit of high ground between George Creek and Mutley.”
“But didn’t any one suspect?” asked Nell.
“Naturally they did after the first time or two, but it was difficult to get proof, for they could not catch the thieves, you see; but a watch was set, and Logan was caught in the act, tried, convicted, and sent to penal servitude. He died in prison, I believe, and did not give information as to where he had hidden a lot of the stuff he had stolen, and which Brunsen was, of course, anxious to get hold of, since he had paid Logan to steal it for him. Then Brunsen forced Doss to give up driving the stage. That was just about the time that your mother was married, and her mother died a few months after.”
Nell nodded. “Yes, I know; I’ve heard father talk about that, because it made mother so ill, and he used to do the cooking,” she said, with a little laugh.
“I dare say he did, for Parson Hamblyn was a good husband, and a good Christian, too. Ah, my dear, you have a lot to be thankful for in your father, even though he was cut off, as it were, in his prime, and I dare say you can’t remember much about him.”
“Oh, I remember a great deal; I was eleven when he died, and I was with him so much, you know. We boarded with Mrs. Chapman at Lewisville then, and he was ill so long.”