“Proceed, sir. Who knows but I may help you?”
“I was a poor man at the time of my wife’s death,” he said. “I have since acquired considerable property. I had an enemy.”
“A poor man, too?”
“Yes, a mere vagrant. He smarted under some fancied injury that I had done him. He attacked me near my own home in relation to it. He was a violent-tongued man and insulted me. I was hot-tempered then and I punished him for his insults.”
“Exactly, and made him revengeful!”
“My two children—mere infants then—were stolen one day, in which I was absent and my wife unwell. It is not necessary to enter into particulars. It is enough to say that we traced them to this vagrant. He was sharply pursued, but we never succeeded in finding him.”
“That was indeed a misfortune.”
“It killed my wife, and has made me a wanderer for years. I have constantly sought that villain and the two precious ones he stole. I have traced him, but too late. He has escaped me by death. His secret is in the grave with him.”
“Where did he die?”
“Here. In Philadelphia. That is why I have settled here. I have hopes that the children may still be alive and in this city.”