“Very well, sir! I shall wait for you with confidence. If I can get back from my former wife the money she robbed me of, I can get on my feet again, and take a respectable position in society. It is very hard for a man dressed as I am to obtain any employment.”
Looking at his shabby and ragged suit, Carl could readily believe this statement. If he had wished to employ anyone he would hardly have been tempted to engage a man so discreditable in appearance. “Be of good courage, Mr. Cook,” he said, kindly. “If your story is correct, and I believe it is, there are better days in store for you.”
“Thank you for those words,” said Cook, earnestly. “They give me new hope.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
FROM ALBANY TO NIAGARA.
Carl took the afternoon train on the following day for Buffalo. His thoughts were busy with the startling discovery he had made in regard to his stepmother. Though he had never liked her, he had been far from imagining that she was under the ban of the law. It made him angry to think that his father had been drawn into a marriage with such a woman—that the place of his idolized mother had been taken by one who had served a term at Sing Sing.
Did Peter know of his mother’s past disgrace? he asked himself. Probably not, for it had come before his birth. He only wondered that the secret had never got out before. There must be many persons who had known her as a prisoner, and could identify her now. She had certainly been fortunate with the fear of discovery always haunting her. Carl could not understand how she could carry her head so high, and attempt to tyrannize over his father and himself.
What the result would be when Dr. Crawford learned the antecedents of the woman whom he called wife Carl did not for a moment doubt. His father was a man of very strict ideas on the subject of honor, and good repute, and the discovery would lead him to turn from Mrs. Crawford in abhorrence. Moreover, he was strongly opposed to divorce, and Carl had heard him argue that a divorced person should not be permitted to remarry. Yet in ignorance he had married a divorced woman, who had been convicted of theft, and served a term of imprisonment. The discovery would be a great shock to him, and it would lead to a separation and restore the cordial relations between himself and his son.
Not long after his settlement in Milford; Carl had written as follows to his father: