“I had no time now to waste, for I knew that your brother would give information that might be bad for me, so I asked the nurse to write down, while I repeated it, the lawyer’s address.
“‘Now,’ says I, ‘go there an’ tell ’em what’s took place. It’ll be the better for yourself if you do.’ An’ then I went straight off to Brighton.”
Chapter Twenty One.
“Well, you must know,” said Paul Bevan, continuing his discourse to the Rose of Oregon, “when I got to Brighton I went to the school, told ’em that your mother was just dead, and brought you straight away. I wasn’t an hour too soon, for, as I expected, your brother had given information, an’ the p’lice were on my heels in a jiffy, but I was too sharp for ’em. I went into hidin’ in London; an’ you’ve no notion, Betty, what a rare place London is to hide in! A needle what takes to wanderin’ in a haystack ain’t safer than a feller is in London, if he only knows how to go about the business.
“I lay there nigh three months, durin’ which time my own poor child Betty continued hoverin’ ’tween life an death. At last, one night when I was at the hospital sittin’ beside her, she suddenly raised her sweet face, an fixin’ her big eyes on me, said—
“‘Father, I’m goin’ home. Shall I tell mother that you’re comin’?’
“‘What d’ye mean, my darlin’?’ says I, while an awful thump came to my heart, for I saw a great change come over her.
“‘I’ll be there soon, father,’ she said, as her dear voice began to fail; ‘have you no message for mother?’