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Do you seriously suppose I should be such a tenfold ass as to offer the management of my estate to a man I couldn't trust?" "What reason have you for trusting me?" West thrust back. "Unless you think that a dozen years in prison have deprived me of my ancient skill. Would you choose a man who has been a drunkard for your butler? No! Then don't choose a swindler and an ex-convict for your bailiff."
The newspaper office was at the other end of the block on Merchant Alley, and that evening's editorial accused Casey of electing himself supervisor and stated that he was an ex-convict from Sing Sing. Within an hour after the paper appeared, Mr. King was carried dying to his room in the same building. It was this murder that brought the second Vigilance Committee into existence.
Chauvenet was known to be a professional blackmailer and plotter of political mischief, and the embassy of Austria-Hungary had identified Durand as an ex-convict who had only lately been implicated in the launching of a dangerous issue of forged bonds in Paris.
At the man's knock the bishop, who lived alone with his sister, Madame Magloire, and an old housekeeper, said "Come in;" and the ex-convict entered. He told them at once that his name was Jean Valjean, that he was a galley-slave, who had spent nineteen years at the hulks, and that he had been walking for four days since his release. "It is the same wherever I go," the man went on.
"But then," Hugh was telling himself, "I reckon now Jean Valjean was about as fierce looking a human wild beast as that good old priest had ever seen at the time he invited the ex-convict into his snug house, and horrified his sister by asking him to sit at table with them, and spend the night there under his hospitable roof."
The man was fined 20s., bound over to keep the peace for twelve months, and allowed by King time to pay the fine. This exasperated the whole military detachment. The idea of an ex-convict striking a soldier who had done him the honour to seduce his wife, and being fined a paltry sovereign, with time to pay!
After he had reached the quiet contentment which is the inevitable result of a well appreciated breakfast and a good cigar, I said to him: "Charley, just drop your tramp story and tell me your true history since leaving the prison. I am anxious to know just what an ex-convict must meet." This young fellow was twenty-five years of age. He served five years in the penitentiary for stealing horses.
Bumped into me at the water-hole and I hopped on that Blacky hawss behind her. He brought us in on the jump and Sharp's old reliable upset Meldrum's apple cart." Still nursing the tips of his tingling fingers, the ex-convict scowled venomously at Beulah. "I'll remember that, missie. That's twice you've interfered with me. I sure will learn you to mind yore own business."
"By this time Braddock has been taken by the police, as Sam Brafford, the ex-convict and yeggman. Is he to go up this time as the father of Christine " David sprang to his side, seizing his right arm in a grip of iron. In the same movement he whirled the older man about and pointed toward the figure at the corner. "It's Braddock!" he hissed. "Now we're in for it. By heaven, he ought to kill you!"
Singularly enough, it took me, trained accountant as I was, a full month to find out what I had been let in for, and why the job I was holding down had been given to an ex-convict. It was my duty to check the railroad waybills on consignments of coal, to correct the weights, and to make claims for overcharges and shortages.
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