Danny gasped. Then, as the tramp was silent, he stirred the fire up into a blaze and drew nearer to him.
“It wasn’t your fault, was it, sir?” he said. “Tell me the story.”
CHAPTER XI
THE TRAMP’S STORY
“I lived,” said the tramp, “in a little house on the edge of a wood just outside a village. I had a little daughter. She was more like a fairy than a child. Her mother died when she was a wee girl. I was an artist. I used to paint pictures of the woods and lanes and trees—the woods by moonlight, the woods at sunrise, the woods all green and blue in spring; the woods looking like dark, solemn churches on winter afternoons, with the red and gold and purple sunset showing through the fine black traceries of the trees like the stained-glass windows of a Gothic cathedral, and blue mist hanging about like incense. And somehow there were always fairies peeping out somewhere in my pictures—Mariette expected them. And after all, what are artists for if not to see what ordinary people miss and put what they see into their pictures? We had no friends, Mariette and I—we didn’t want any. We had each other and the fairies.
“Sometimes I used to spend the night out in the woods, getting pictures into my head to paint by day, or so as to catch the very first glimmer of golden clouds for a picture of the sunrise fairies. I used to leave Mariette at the cottage of my old nurse, whom she loved very much. It was on one of these sunrise days that my bad dreams began.
“Mariette was just seven. I had left her with the old nurse, and had started out to spend a night in the woods about five miles away. I took a few things with me so as to camp in the bracken, and be fresh and ready to paint at dawn. As I walked through the village, I chanced to meet a man that Mariette and I always called ‘the wicked uncle.’ He was the only person in the place that we did not like. He lived in a square, grey house, with dirty windows, and most of the blinds drawn down. He had a mean, cruel face, and little eyes like a rat. We were quite sure no fairies lived in his garden—it was a sad, dull garden, with no flowers.
“As I passed him that evening at dusk, he said, ‘Good evening. Going on a painting expedition?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But surely,’ said the wicked uncle, ‘you can’t paint by moonlight?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I am going to sleep out in the woods, and paint at sunrise.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘and what happens to your little girl?’ ‘She stays with Mrs. Binks,’ I answered. I was getting tired of his questions. ‘Going far?’ he called after me. I had grown impatient. ‘Yes, miles and miles,’ I shouted. I felt angry to think of his having pried into our private affairs. Somehow I did not sleep well on my bracken bed. I kept seeing the face of ‘the wicked uncle,’ and his little peering eyes in the dusk.
“After sunrise I painted for a few hours, and then started home. It was nine when I reached Mrs. Binks’ cottage, where I had gone to call for Mariette to come back and help me cook my breakfast. But she was not there, nor was Mrs. Binks.
“I went on to our cottage, but they were not there either. So I made myself some tea and fried an egg, and just as I was sitting down to begin, I heard the sound of feet on the cobbled path outside. It was a strange, tramping sound, and I expected to hear a rap on my knocker. But to my surprise the door was opened from outside, and for a moment I saw the cunning face of the ‘wicked uncle.’
“Then a police inspector and three constables marched in. I was too much surprised to speak. It was the inspector who broke the silence. ‘I arrest you,’ he said, ‘on a charge of forgery.’ Click, click, and handcuffs were on my wrists.