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!"
At that piercing cry of unutterable reproach, the dying woman held up
her supplicating hands.
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