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

340 страница из 895

“‘Hang it all, this is cheeky for a youngster, lord or no lord,’ says I. ‘I don’t think I could have done it better myself.’

“I can’t tell you how I lived for the next two or three years. It was, perhaps, something after the manner of the dog who has no master—​to-day, I might be feeding on garbage; to-morrow, snatching a bone from a smaller and weaker dog; and a third time, waiting for the refuse of those who were over-gorged. Like a fly, I dipped into every man’s cup that came into my way; but, strange to say, all this time it never came into my head to look back on a gipsy’s life.”

“Shall I tell you why?” muttered the man in the corner. “There is a charm in a vagabond’s wayward life which none but a vagabond can appreciate.”

“What is a gipsy’s life but that of a vagabond state of existence?” inquired Peace.

“True,” returned the other. “Granted, but not precisely in the same degree as the one he had been following. He had known what a wayward life was in the country, but the town loafer’s life was new to him, and brought fresh charms—​yes, charms, I will call them. There is positively a fascinating spell in a life of monetary casualty which is a mystery to those who are well provided for in life. Even the extreme of misery does not break the spell. Sadness oftentimes twines itself around the strings of the heart, while it releases and softens them.