o 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.

"There," he said, "yer can read it for yerself."

"Cobbler" Horn took the paper, and glanced at its contents. He had seen
in various newspapers, if not this, several similar accounts of the
adventures of his child.

"Ah," he said, handing back to the man the greasy and crumpled paper,
"tell me about it."

"Well, you knows that field where you found one of her shoes?"

"Yes."

"Well, we wos a sitting under the hedge, near that field, one morning,
a-dining, when the kid came along. She stopped when she see'd us; and we
invited her to go along with us, and somehow she seemed as if she didn't
like to refuse. Arter that, we took her into the wood; and the old woman
stripped off her clothes, and did her up like as she was when she was
found. She'd lost one of her shoes, and I went back for it; but I couldn't
find it nowheres. You may be sure as we got out o' these parts as fast as
we could. We thought as the kid 'ud be a rare help in the cadging line.
But she was that stubborn and noisy, we soon got sorry as we'd ever taken
on with her; and, if she hadn't took herself right away, one arternoon
when we was having of our arter-dinner nap in a dry ditch, I do believe
as the old woman 'ud ha' found some means o' putting her on one side."

Having finished his story, the dying tramp lay still for awhile, with his
eyes closed.

"Cobbler" Horn looked down with pity upon the seamed and wrinkled face,
from which almost all expression, except that of utter weariness, seemed
to have been worn away.

Presently the dying man opened his eyes.

"That's all as I has to tell, master," he said faintly. "Do yer think,
now, as yer could find it in yer heart to forgive a cove, like? It 'ud be
none the worse for me, if yer could; nor, mayhap, for yourself neither.
I'se sorry I done it."

"Cobbler" Horn was deeply moved. But, as he now knew as much of what had
happened to Marian as was likely ever to come to light, he could afford to
let the matter rest; and already he found himself thinking more of the
miserable case of the dying waif before him, than of the confession the
poor creature had made. So he gave himself fully to the congenial task of
trying to bring this miserable being, i