Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying. Rambles among our Gipsies and their children in their tents and vans онлайн

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“How did your friends find you out at last?” “Well,” said Pether, “after I ran away from home my mother advertised for me all over the country, spending scores of pounds to no purpose. On account of my changing my clothes and name, and travelling with gipsies and tramps, and becoming as one of them, they could never find me out, till I had been away nearly eighteen years. How I was found out arose as follows. One day I was sitting in a beershop with some gipsies, when a man came in who knew me, and he seemed to look, and look and eye me over, head and foot, from top to bottom, as he never had done before. While he was looking at me, it seemed to strike me at once that I was at last found out for the murder I had always thought that I had committed. He went away for a little time out of the public-house, and as it has been told me since, he went to the telegraph office to send a telegram to my brother-in-law, who was in London, not many miles away, to come down by the next train, for they had found out who they thought to be their ‘Jack.’ He was not away very long, and I was in twenty minds to have run out of the house; but as he did not come back in a few minutes, I thought I was wrong in judging that I had been found out. Lord bless you, sir, did not I open my eyes when he came in again and brought one or two men with him, and sat down and called for some beer. My legs and knees began to knock together; I was all of a tremble, and I got up to go out of the house, but they called for some beer and would not let me leave the place. For the life of me I could not make it all out. Sometimes I imagined the new-comers were detectives in disguise. They joked and chaffed and seemed quite merry. I can assure you, sir, that I was not merry. I got up several times to try to get out of the house, and to sneak away. He ordered some dinner, and would have no ‘nay,’ but that I must join them. I tried to eat with them, but I can assure you, sir, it was not much that I could either eat or drink. Presently, after dinner, another man came into the room and sat down and called for some beer. I did not know the man. It has turned out since that the last comer was no other than my brother-in-law. It flashed across me that I was at last found out, and no mistake. I was a doomed man; and this surmise seemed to be doubly true when he took out of his pocket a newspaper and began to read an advertisement giving the description of me at the time I ran away. They now called me by my own name, and asked the landlord to allow me to have a wash, which he readily granted. When this was over and I was ready, they said, ‘Now, Jack, we shall want you to go with us.’ Of course there was nothing for it but to go. The worst was come, and I thought I must screw up courage and face it out as well as I could. On our way we called at the telegraph office, where one of the men sent something by telegraph. I did not know what. I have since heard that it was a telegram to my mother, stating that they had found her son ‘Jack,’ and they were on the way to her house with him. On the way through London to go, as I thought, to the police-station, we turned off the main street to go up a by-street. For the life of me I could not tell where this was, except that they were going to change my clothes, or put ‘steel buckles’ upon my wrists. We went into a tidy sort of a little house, which I thought was the home of one of the detectives who was with us. I was asked to sit upon the old sofa, and the men sat round the fire. For a little while all was as still as death. Presently I heard someone coming downstairs. The footstep did not sound like that of a man. In a minute there stood before me a woman between fifty and sixty years old. I thought I had seen the face somewhere, but could not tell where. The voice seemed to be a voice that I had heard somewhere, times back.