“I worked for him for a long while—he acted as if he owned me. He is a miserable skinflint, nothing less. If you go to him he will work you to death and treat you worse than a slave. He never lets up on anybody, not even his own relations.”
And then and there Leo sat down again and told his story—how he had slaved for the farmer and run away and become a professional circus performer.
Mart listened with interest, his face growing paler as he proceeded.
“You are right; I have nothing to expect from him, even though he was my mother’s own half-brother.”
“Won’t you tell me your story?” asked Leo.
“Willingly, if you care to listen to it.”
And then Mart told how he had been an orphan for ten years. His father had been an actor and his mother a comic-opera singer.
“The Hawkinses never had much to do with us after mother went on the stage,” he said. “That is how I lost track of my uncle.”
Then he told of his mother’s death in New Orleans and how he had been cast out on the streets by an old woman with whom they boarded. He had danced down in the French quarter, and there Porler had picked him up.
“He promised me so many things that I went with him willingly,” he said. “But it was a great mistake.”