CHAPTER XCII.
AN OUTCAST IN LONDON—THE GIPSY’S TRIALS AND TROUBLES.
The London career of Charles Peace was the most remarkable and daring one it is well possible to conceive. Indeed, we have nothing on record equal to it in the life of any criminal of ancient or modern times. We shall have occasion to shadow this forth in the succeeding chapters of our work.
We have followed the footsteps of our hero up to the time of his becoming a resident in Evelina-road, Peckham. For the present we shall have to leave him, that we may turn back to an earlier period and chronicle the doings of some of the other personages who have figured on the stage of our drama.
Mr. William Rawton, the gipsy, better known to the reader as “Bandy-legged Bill,” left Sheffield after Peace’s last conviction. To use his own phrase, he saw “the game was up,” and that his quondam companion had a “pretty good dose.” The gipsy, therefore, turned his thoughts in another direction, and sought out his patron, as he was pleased to term him.
The gentleman in question was distantly related to the Ethalwoods, but he was the black sheep of the flock—a restless, careless, ne’er-do-well, who ran through his patrimony by betting largely. In addition to this, he had other vices, which are too numerous to mention. To do him justice, however, he had been kind to the gipsy on several occasions. He advanced him money when very hard pushed, and put many jobs in his way.
It was, therefore, a sad blow to Rawton when he was informed of his patron’s demise. He felt that he had lost a good friend, and deeply deplored the loss.
In addition to this misfortune, another befel him.
The groom in Park-lane, who had been so staunch and true to him in times of great necessity, mistook his master’s property for his own, and had to decamp to save himself from a worse fate. So the ill-fated gipsy was left without a friend in the metropolis.
He went from bad to worse, and finally became so reduced that he was on the verge of starvation.