"Mary Dane died, and I buried her. The child went to the work-house—I would not have touched it with a pair of tongs—and there it, too, died of lack and care. And so the miserable story of sin and shame ended, as all such stories must end.
"But the misery did not end here. You were left me, but I seemed to care for you no longer. I sat down, a stunned and senseless thing, and let all belonging to me go to rack and ruin. The farm went, the furniture went, the homestead went—I was left a widowed, penniless, half-crazed wretch. Thus all was gone but the clothes upon our backs—you went, too. We were starving, but for the pitying charity of others. As you sat singing by the road-side, the manager of a strolling band of players overheard you, took a fancy to your pretty looks, and ways, and voice, and made me an offer for you. I don't think I knew what I was doing half the time—I didn't then—I let you go.
"When you were gone I broke down altogether, and the authorities of the village took and shut me up in a lunatic asylum. The years I spent there—and I spent six long years—are but a dull, dead blank. My life began again when they sent me forth, as they said—cured.
"I left Steeple Hill and began my life as a tramp. I joined a band of gypsies, and took to their ways—fortune-telling, rush-weaving—anything that came up; and I was black enough and weather-beaten enough to pass for one of them. I had but one desire left in life. To hunt up the manager of the little theater, and see my daughter again. I didn't want you back. What could I, a miserable tramp, homeless, houseless, do with a young girl?—but I hungered and thirsted for the sound of your voice, for the sight of your face. I would know you anywhere—you were of the kind that do not change much. I knew I would recognize you as soon as I saw you.
"For two years I strolled about with the gypsy gang, searching in vain. Then my time came, and I saw you. It was at Liverpool, embarking on board a vessel for America. I had money—made in those two yeas wandering—hidden in my breast, more than enough for my passage. I crossed the Atlantic in the same vessel with you, and never lost sight of you since.
"But a great, a mighty shock was waiting for me this side the ocean. On the pier, as we landed, Mollie, the first person my eyes rested on was the man Walls—older, darker, sterner than when I saw him before, but my arch-enemy—the murderer Walls.
"Mollie, I let you go and I followed that man home, followed him to a mansion that was like a palace, and I heard his name—his real name. Mollie, Mollie, do you need to be told what that name is?"
"No," said Mollie, in a horror-struck voice; "it is Carl Walraven!"
"It is. Now do you know why I hate him—why I would die the death of a dog by the way-side before I would take a crust from him?"
"And yet," Mollie cried in a voice of bitter anguish, "you have let me, James Dane's child, eat of his bread, drink of his cup, dwell under his roof! Oh, my mother!"