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It was the thief's bundle, the bundle of jewels which he stole from the house on the night of the Hunt Ball, which we have tried so hard to recover! To think to think that all this time they have been hidden close at hand!" "Hidden with a purpose, too!
This bitter raging struggle of contending passions in the thief's heart harmed his soul more than had years of burglary and petty larceny. All the vices of the old jail system are nothing compared with the diabolical effect of solitude on a heart smarting with daily wrongs. Brooding on self is always corrupting; but to brood on self and wrongs is to ripen for madness, murder and all crime.
The knife fell to the floor, and the thief made a gallant effort to recover it, but King was too strong for him. He seized the knife himself, slipped it in his own bosom and resumed his hold before the native guessed what he was after. Then he kept a tight grip while Hyde knelt to grope for his missing property. The major found both the thief's bags, and held them up.
"If it's manners you want, Clare," resumed Tommy, "please let me go!" Clare turned and looked at him. The evil expression was hardened on his countenance. He gave him no answer. "You ain't never agoin' to turn agin an old pal, aire you?" said Tommy. "I ain't a pal of yours, Tommy, or of any other thief's!" answered Clare. "I'll take my oath on it to the beak!"
There are men who cheat and make presents; there are men who are saints abroad and churls at home, as Bunyan says; there are men who screw down the wages of their clerks and leave vast sums to the poor; men who build churches with the proceeds of drunkenness; men who promote bubble companies and have prayers in their families morning and evening; men, in a word, who can be very generous with what is not their own; for nothing ill-gotten is a man's own any more than the money in a thief's pocket: Clare was not of the contemptible order of the falsely generous.
I'd give a shillin' a wheal out of my own pocket for the blessed privilege of scoring the thief's face with my whip, till his own mother wouldn't know him! And then she went on, sir, abusing all the men in her Irish way, which I can't repeat. At last she stops, and claps me on the back. 'You're a darlin' old girl, Peck! says she, 'and your friends are my friends.
The luminary himself postponed his setting for a time, put the thief's shoe in his pocket and went straight to the residence of Bill Jones, which he reached shortly after the grey dawn had appeared. Here he found Bill in bed; but being peremptory in his demand for admission, Bill arose and let him in. "You look rather pale this morning, Bill?"
Wilt thou not take upon thy lips that dying thief's petition, and cry 'Lord, remember me; or this prayer, 'Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner'?" A gray shadow was creeping over the rugged face, the lips seemed to move, but no words came forth.
His companion, rallying from the momentary shock, left Ferris and charged at the prostrate thief's assailant. But Chum met him, with a fierce eagerness, more than half way. A true collie thanks to his strain of wolf bloodfights as does no other dog. What he lacks in stubborn determination he atones for by swiftness and by his uncanny brain power.
Within the hour, unless Maitland were indeed mad or dreaming, a woman had stood by that desk and rested a hand, palm down, upon it; not yet had the dust had time to settle and blur the sharp outlines. Maitland shook his head with bewilderment, thinking of the grey girl. But no. He rejected his half-formed explanation the obvious one. Besides, what had he there worth a thief's while?
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