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

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“Now, my old ourang-outang,” said the gipsy, addressing himself to the emaciated man, “let us have an account of your times when you were in the land of the living.”

“I had thought,” responded the prisoner addressed, “that I had some weeks since achieved a victory over memory and buried all recollections of the past. I had shut myself wholly in passive resignation to the future without suffering myself to revert to the bygone events of my life, the frequent reference to which had previously worn me to the object you now behold. But that man,” pointing to the gipsy, “has broken down the barrier within which I had taken shelter. He has, in a few words, informed me of the causes of my ruin. His villainies have brought me here.

“The family of which I am an unworthy member was more distinguished for its ancestors than for its possessions.”

The speaker had got thus far when the ponderous lock of the door was turned, and a police sergeant and two constables, accompanied by a prison warder, entered.