“She must ha’ bin mighty fond o’ the young carpenter,” he murmured, as he took his way over the meadows. “Mighty fond, to keep the memory o’ him green for so long a time. Wimmen they’re strange creatures—the best on us can’t mek ’em out at times, and yet—yet—dall it, I do love that gell, and that’s the honest truth.”
CHAPTER VIII.
PEACE HAS ANOTHER NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE.
For some considerable time after the death of the Badger, Peace worked regularly at his trade. Orders came in pretty freely, and as Bessie Dalton had prognosticated several gentlemen associated with him at the concert given for the benefit of the weaver’s widow took great pleasure in recommending him to their friends as a skilful and reasonable carver and gilder.
Had he chosen to do so he might have established a very good business in the town of Bradford, but the greed of gain and the spirit of adventure, as he termed it, was for ever urging him on to commit lawless acts. Hence it was that steady industry became after a while distasteful to him.
His course of life presents us with a melancholy picture—cunning, roguery, wholesale plunder, and reckless bravado. The old adage of “once a thief always a thief” was exemplified in him.
His thin, firmly compressed lips gave one an impression of a man who, if put to it, would stick at nothing to gain his ends. There was a wolfish look about his face, his eyes appeared more like the eyes of a wild beast than of a human being; he had a good square head and altogether looked like one who had both the head to plan and the hand to carry out any villainy on which he had set his heart.
As we have before noted Mrs. Bristow and her husband occupied the parlours of the house in which Peace lodged. Bristow was a smith by trade; in addition to this he was a wretch, who drank horribly, treated his wife—who was a pretty little woman of decent parentage and belongings—with the greatest brutality.
Drink, it has been observed, is the curse of the British workman; the fatal propensity has led to the commission of numberless crimes.
Our courts of justice furnish us with a black catalogue of atrocities, assaults, and murders, committed by habitual and confirmed drunkards.