The Golden Shoemaker Part 43

"Say no more, daddy; it's quite settled. I shall very likely ask for an increase of salary; but there must be no talk of dismissal."

Again she laughed; and, in spite of himself, the happy father joined in her merriment.

"Well now, I must go," she said, with a parting kiss. "I'll send Miss Horn---- Why, she's my aunt! I declare I'd quite overlooked that!"

"Yes, my dear; and a very kind aunt you'll find her."

"I'm sure of that. But I'm afraid she'll be thinking me a very undutiful niece."

At this moment, the door opened, and Miss Jemima herself walked in.

"I thought it was time I came," she said, in her usual matter-of-fact way.

"You must be thinking of getting back to bed, Thomas."

Her niece interrupted her by throwing her arms around her neck, and giving her a hearty kiss.

"Aunt Jemima, I have to beg your pardon," and she kissed her again; "but you didn't give me time, you were all off like a flock of sheep."

"I think it is my place to beg your pardon, and not yours to beg mine,"

replied Miss Jemima, in the most natural way in the world. "I fear it was largely through me that you ran away from home."

"Did I actually run away, then?"

"I think there's little doubt of it. But, whether you ran away or not, the fact remains that my treatment of you had been anything but kind. I meant well, but was mistaken; and I'm thankful to have the opportunity of asking you to forgive me."

"Don't say another word about it, auntie!" cried Marian, kissing her once more. "It's literally all forgotten. And I dare say I was a troublesome little thing. But let me see. You haven't seen my treasures yet--except the shoe. I'll fetch them."

In a few moments she had brought her little sun-bonnet, and the other relics of her childhood which she had preserved. It will not be difficult to imagine the tender interest with which Aunt Jemima, and even "Cobbler"

Horn himself, gazed on those simple mementos of the past. The severed bonnet-string was lying on the bed. Marian caught it up, and fitted it upon the bonnet.

"I must sew my bonnet-string on," she said, gaily.

Her father laughed indulgently, and even Aunt Jemima smiled.

"Ah," she said, "and I too have a store of treasures to display," and she told of the little box in which she had kept the tiny garments Marian had worn in the days of old.

"How delicious?" cried the girl. "You will let me see them, by and bye, auntie, won't you? But now I really must be off to my letters."

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE TRAMP'S CONFESSION.

Before "the Golden Shoemaker" had returned to his bed the doctor arrived, and despotically demanded how he had dared to leave it without the permission of his medical man. At first the doctor prognosticated serious consequences from what he was pleased to call his patient's "intemperate and unlicensed haste." But, when he came the next day, and found "Cobbler"

Horn considerably better, instead of worse, he changed his mind.

"My dear sir," he said, "what have you been doing?"

"I've been taking a new tonic, doctor," replied "Cobbler" Horn, with a smile; and he told him the great news.

"Well, well," murmured the doctor; "so it has actually turned out like that! I have often thought that there were many less likely things; and ever since you told me how closely the young lady's early history resembled that of your own child, I have had a sort of expectation that I should one day hear the announcement you have just made. Well, my dear sir, I congratulate you both--as much on the fitness of the fact, as on the fact itself."

"Cobbler" Horn's "new tonic" acted liked magic, and he was soon out of the doctor's hands. In a few days' time he was downstairs; and at the end of a fortnight he had resumed his ordinary routine of life.

As far as outward appearances were concerned, the great discovery which had been made produced but little difference in the house. The servants had, indeed, been informed of the change in the position of the young secretary. It was also understood that she was to have things pretty much her own way. It was moreover tacitly admitted that almost unlimited arrears of filial privilege were due to the newly-recovered daughter of the house; and she herself evidently felt that the arrears of filial duty lying to her charge were quite equal in amount. "The Golden Shoemaker"

regarded his new-found child with a very tender love; and even Miss Jemima manifested towards her an indulgent, if somewhat prim, affection. The gentle affectionateness of the girl towards both her father and her aunt was beautiful in the extreme. Yet, even towards Miss Jemima, she was delightfully free from constraint; and it would have been difficult to decide whether to admire more the loving familiarity of the niece, or the complaisancy of the aunt.

In the matter of the secretaryship Marian was firmness itself. "Cobbler"

Horn wished her to give it up; and Miss Jemima was shocked at the idea that she should propose to retain it for a single day. But she dismissed their remonstrances with a fine scorn. What did they take her for? Was she any less fit for the post of secretary than she had been before? Her duties had been a pleasure from the first; they would afford her greater delight than ever now. And why should they bring in a stranger to pry into their affairs? They might give her more salary, if they liked--and here she laughed merrily; but she wasn't going to give up the work she liked more than anything else in the world.

One perplexing question yet remained unsolved--What had happened to Marian between the day when she had left home and the time when she had been found by Mr. and Mrs. Burton? The girl's own vague memories of that unhappy period, together with the condition in which she had been found, indicated that she had fallen into the hands of bad characters of some kind. Was the mystery ever to be fully solved? To this question the course of events brought very speedily a complete reply.

One evening, about a fortnight after the last-recorded events, an elderly tramp was sitting against a haystack upon some farm premises, at no great distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or, allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded and unwell. The day had been very warm, and the man was eating, with no great appet.i.te, a sumptuous supper of German sausage and bread. The sausage had been wrapped in a piece of newspaper, which spread out upon his knees, was now doing duty as a tablecloth. Having finished his meal, the man lazily glanced at the paper; but finding its contents, at first, to possess no particular interest, he was about to crumple it up and throw it away, when his eye lighted on a paragraph which induced him to pause.

He smoothed out the paper, and raised it nearer to his eyes.

"Well," he muttered, "I ain't much of a scholard; but I means to get to the bottom o' this 'ere."

With intense eagerness, he began to spell out the words of the paragraph which had arrested his attention. It was headed, "'The Golden Shoemaker'

recovers his daughter, supposed to have been stolen by tramps in her childhood." From line to line he laboured painfully on. Many times his progress was stayed by some formidable word; and again and again he was interrupted by a violent cough; but at length he had ascertained the contents of the paragraph. It contained as much as was known of the history of Marian Horn. It told how, at the age of five, she had, as was supposed, run away from home, and, as recently-discovered circ.u.mstances seemed to indicate, fallen into the hands of evil persons; and how all trace of her had then been lost until a few weeks afterwards, when, as had now become known, she was found, a wretched little waif, upon the highway, and adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Burton. The circ.u.mstances of her after life were then set forth; and the narrative concluded with a glowing account of her re-union with her friends. The tramp deeply pondered this romantic story.

"Ah," he said to himself, "that must ha' been the little wench as me and the old woman took to. It was somewhere here away. I remember about the shoe as she'd lost. They must ha' found it. The old woman cut the other shoe, same as it says here. It were a bad thing of us to take the kid, that it were."

At this point the man was seized with a violent fit of coughing. When it had subsided, he resumed his half-muttered meditations. "Well, I'm glad as the little 'un got took care on, arter all, and has got back to her own natural born father at last; for she were a game little wench, and no mistake. She were a poor people's child when we got hold on her. But I've heerd tell o' 'the Golden Shoemaker,' as they calls him. It must ha' been arter she was lost that he got his money. Well, I feels sorry, like, as we didn't try to find her friends. But the old gal were that onscrupulous, she didn't stick at nothink, she didn't. As sure as my name's Jake Dafty, this 'ere's a queer go."

Thus mused Jake, the tramp, sitting against the haystack; and his musings were, ever and anon, disturbed by his racking cough. He felt indisposed to move. As he brooded over the past, his mind became uneasy, he was conscious of a vague desire to make confession of the evil he had done.

Did he feel that the sands of his life were almost sped? And was conscience waking at last?

At length, between his fits of coughing, he was overtaken by sleep. The night was chilly after the warm day. The sun went down, and the stars peeped out serenely upon the frowzy and wretched tramp asleep against the haystack; and the dew settled thickly on his ragged beard and tattered clothes. Every now and then he was shaken by his cough; but he was weary, and remained asleep. And, in his sleep, the past came back more vividly than it had ever re-visited him in his waking hours. He seemed to be present at the despoiling and ill-using of a dark-eyed child, whom he might have delivered, and did not; and, from time to time, he moved uneasily in his sleep, and groaned aloud.

Thus pa.s.sed the night; and, in the morning, Jake, being found by the farm people, in his place against the haystack, delirious, and evidently ill, was conveyed to the workhouse.

The next day "the Golden Shoemaker" received word that a man who was dying in the workhouse begged to see him at once. "Cobbler" Horn ordered his closed carriage, and drove to the workhouse without delay. The man, who was Jake, the tramp, had not long to live. His delirium was over now, and he was quite himself. His eyes were fixed eagerly upon the face of "Cobbler" Horn, as the latter entered the room.

"Are you 'the Golden Shoemaker'?" he asked.

"So I am sometimes called," replied "Cobbler" Horn, with a smile.

"Well--I ain't got much time--I'm the bloke wot stole your little 'un; me and the old woman."

"Cobbler" Horn uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"Yes. The old woman's gone. She died in quod. I don't know what they had done to her. Perhaps nothink: maybe her time was come. I warn't that sorry; she'd got to be a stroke too many for me. But I want to tell you about the little 'un. I'm a going to die, and it 'ull be as well to get it off my mind. There ain't no mistake; cos I see'd it in the paper, and it tallies. I've got it here."

As he spoke, he drew from beneath his pillow the crumpled piece of newspaper on which he had read of the restoration of Marian to her father.