“And they want to re-form the gang,” said Hugh, “and make Mr. Ogden one of the partners—the one who provides the money.”
“And they say if he doesn’t promise all they want they will tell everybody all about the past, when (as they say) he was the boss of their gang, and made off to America with all the swag. And they say he wasn’t called Ogden in those days—his name was Crale.”
“What!” said the Tramp, with a sudden, hard, fierce note in his voice that startled the Cubs, and made them peer through the dim light to try and see his face. “What!” he repeated.
“Crale!” said David.
He little knew what that name called up in the mind of the Mysterious Tramp—sad scenes of eight years ago. In the darkness he seemed to see a long white road, winding between green woods, and on the road he himself, a gay young artist, with a little fair-haired girl holding on to his hand, and jumping about for very joy of being alive, and then a dark, sinister-looking house, with Mr. Crale standing at the gate. “The wicked uncle looks very cross this morning, daddy,” would say Mariette; “poor wicked uncle, perhaps he wishes he had a little girl. He must be awful lonely.”
And then another scene. The sneering face of Crale, as handcuffs are clipped on to the wrists of the young artist, and he (an innocent man) is arrested as a forger. And then his face again, in the court, giving evidence, and showing the false letters, supposed to be from the artist, making over his little girl to one of the members of his gang.
But David was continuing his story, and the Tramp was obliged to turn his mind from the sad past to the strange present.
“We were hunting for Danny,” continued David, “and we heard this plot by accident. We don’t much care what happens, as long as we find Danny. We thought we’d better follow up and hear what Black Bill says to grandfather, because it might give us a clue.”
“Yes,” said the Tramp eagerly. “Yes, we will go to the wood at once and try and hear what passes.”
Danny’s fate was far from the Tramp’s mind. Here at last he was getting close to that which had occupied all his thoughts for nearly eight years. Here was a chance of learning the whereabouts of his little Mariette and—of revenge.