Burlock. "The good people of this town have been
working hard to save such men as I have been--but no longer will I rank
myself with such. That young man, Ralph Willoby, had pleaded with me in
a way few could have resisted, but the trouble was, I was in the hands
of a man who had been my evil genius for years, and no matter how firm
was my resolve to get away from temptation, this tyrant would manage to
put the poison into my hands. Of course I thought him a friend,--that
was what he had always pretended to be,--but through the strange
interference of this little girl,"--laying his hand on Dorothy,--"I
have seen the light; the scales have fallen from my eyes."
The awful face of the villainous man, who had so frightened Dorothy on
the stairs of the Bugle office, seemed to flash into that room. Could he
be that evil genius?
"Yes, Major Dale," he went on, "you must have heard by this time that a
man waylaid your daughter, grabbed the papers from her hands and tried
to frighten her so that there would be no outcry until he had made his
escape. Well, that man was no other than he who put liquor to my lips
when I was a boy; who took me from my home when I was a husband, and
made me sign papers that would leave my young wife helpless in all the
affairs that she should rightfully control.
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