The Black Wolf Pack | Page 3

relish and none of us tried to make conversation. It was a painful sort of a meal and I wanted to have it over with as soon as I could. It seemed hours before Nora cleared the table and served dad's demi-tasse.
I guess I then looked him full in the eyes for the first time since the occurrence on Front Street.
"That was a very unkind thing for Blink Broosmore to do," said dad, and I knew by the firmness and evenness of his voice that he had gained full control of his feelings.
"Is--is--oh, did he tell the truth, dad?" I gulped helplessly and for the life of me I could not keep back the tears.
"Unfortunately, Donald, there is just enough truth in it to make it hurt," said dad and I could see mother wince as if she had been struck, and turn away her face.
"They why--why? Oh! who am I?" I cried, for the whole thing had completely unnerved me.
"Don dear, we do not know to a certainty," said mother struggling with her emotions.
"But now that you are partly aware of the situation, I think there is a way you can find out, at least as much as we know," said dad, getting up and going into the library.
Through the doorway I could see him fumbling at the safe that he kept there beside the desk. Presently he drew out a battered and dented red tin box and a bundle of papers. These he brought into the dining room and laid on the table. Then he drew up a chair, cleared his throat, rather loudly it seemed to me, and began.
"Don, we always wanted a child, and why the Lord never blessed us with one of our own we do not know. Anyway, we wanted one so badly that we decided to adopt one. That was seventeen years ago, wasn't it, mother?"
Mother nodded.
"Doctor Raymond, the physician at the county institution, knew our desires and, being an old friend of the family, he volunteered to find us a good healthy baby that we could adopt and call our own. Not a week later you appeared on the scene. Dr. Raymond told us that a wagon drawn by a raw-boned horse, and loaded with household goods, drew up to the orphanage and a tired and worn-out looking old lady got out with a lusty year old child in one arm and this box and these papers under the other.
"At the office of the asylum she explained how she and her husband were moving from a Connecticut town to a little farm they had bought in Pennsylvania. Somewhere at a crossroad near Derby, Connecticut, they had found the baby and this box and bundle of papers in a basket under a bush with a card attached to the basket requesting that the finder adopt and take care of the baby.
"Of course, they could not pass the infant by, but the woman explained that they were too poor and too old to adopt the child so they had gone miles out of their way to find an orphanage and leave the baby there, along with the box and papers.
"When Dr. Raymond heard the story and saw you, for you were the baby, he got me on the telephone and told me all about you. And that night he brought you here, and you were such a chubby, bright, interesting little fellow that mother and I fell in love with you immediately and decided to adopt you, which we did according to law. So you are our legal child, Don, and all that, although we are not your real parents."
Somehow that made me feel a little happier. Dad and mother did have a claim on me at least. That was something.
"It was not until after Dr. Raymond had left," went on father, "that mother and I examined the box and papers that had come with you. Here they are."
Dad took up a worn and age-yellowed envelope addressed in a bold hand:
To the Finder
Inside was the following brief message:
TO THE FINDER:--
The mother of this child, Donald Mullen, is dead. I, his father, cannot give him the care he should have. Will you, the finder, adopt him, care for him, and bring him up to be an honest, trustworthy man, and win the eternal gratitude of his dead mother and
DONALD MULLEN, his father.
"Then my name is--or was Mullen," I exclaimed.
"According to that," said dad softly, "but when you became our son we kept your first name and discarded the family name of course."
"But--but what has become of my father, Donald Mullen?" I asked.
"My boy, we have tried both for your sake and for our own to find out. We have followed up and searched every possible clue and--but wait, here are other papers of interest and