“So I am sometimes called,” replied “Cobbler” Horn, with a smile.
“Well—I ain’t got much time—I’m the bloke wot stole your little ’un; me and the old woman.”
“Cobbler” Horn uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Yes. The old woman’s gone. She died in quod. I don’t know what they had done to her. Perhaps nothink: maybe her time was come. I warn’t that sorry; she’d got to be a stroke too many for me. But I want to tell you about the little ’un. I’m a going to die, and it ’ull be as well to get it off my mind. There ain’t no mistake; cos I see’d it in the paper, and it tallies. I’ve got it here.”
As he spoke, he drew from beneath his pillow the crumpled piece of newspaper on which he had read of the restoration of Marian to her father.
“There,” he said, “yer can read it for yerself.”
“Cobbler” Horn took the paper, and glanced at its contents. He had seen in various newspapers, if not this, several similar accounts of the adventures of his child.
“Ah,” he said, handing back to the man the greasy and crumpled paper, “tell me about it.”
“Well, you knows that field where you found one of her shoes?”
“Yes.”