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

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Gregson sat himself down upon the wooden stool in his cell without moving.

The bitterness of his thoughts it would not be so easy to describe.

He remembered with harrowing distinctness the most remote incident of the night upon which the ill-fated James Hopgood fell beneath the fatal blow.

“And that cursed woman!” ejaculated the Badger. “Who would have dreamt of her being an inmate of the farmhouse? And the oily-tongued Peace, he has got clear off, I’ll dare be sworn; and the chances are that he is now playing that old fiddle of his—​whilst I—​I—”

Here he uttered an impious oath, and then lapsed into silence again.

He sat for two hours a prey to the most agonising thoughts.

At the expiration of that time he uttered curses loud and deep. He ran frantically round his narrow cell.

One of the turnkeys opened the door, and told him that he must make less noise. There was a punishment for making an outcry of that nature, and he pointed to one of the printed rules.

The “cracksman” answered with a howl of rage, and squatted abjectly on his stone floor.