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

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“I am well repaid by looking at one so lovely.”

He withdrew his hand from the watch and retreated some two or three steps backwards towards the door of the room.

Then he became immovable again.

“This will never do,” he muttered. “If I go on like this I shall run the chance of being discovered; and how then? No, I must away at once, and yet, hang it, she is so very beautiful!”

He again rivetted his eyes on the form of the sleeper, upon which he once or twice cast the rays of his lantern.

“I’m a weak, silly fool to be overcome thus—​an idiot. Bah! there must be an end to it.”

He turned round and crept through the half-opened door. Down the stairs, with faltering steps, he then proceeded. He entered the front parlour, and then the back. He stripped them of as many valuables as he could conveniently carry, and then passed out of the house by the back door.

All this had been done without his disturbing any one.

Taking his way along the garden he passed out into the high road. Not a soul was to be seen. The night was clear and bright; and he walked on for a good half mile. Upon arriving at the end of a lane which ran out of the road he halted, looking the while to the right and left.