Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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He was a refiner, and dealt in metals of every description. In addition to this he was a usurer.

Living in an old dilapidated house in one of the back streets of his native town he contrived to drive a prosperous trade; but throughout his whole life declared he was miserably poor.

He was plagued by a number of poor relations, some of whom, it is believed, robbed him.

Anyway, in the last closing years of his life, he was under the impression that his rapacious relatives would send him out of the world before his time.

This thought haunted him by day and by night.

He was eccentric to the last degree. He grew old and feeble, and prior to his last illness he unfastened the back of his looking glass and laid the notes carefully on the silvering at the back of the plate.

This done, he replaced the backboard in its original position, and felt a grim satisfaction at glancing at the glass on the table by the side of his bed, upon which he shortly breathed his last.

As a matter of course after his decease the house was pretty well filled with his relatives.