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.
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