“I did well. If the time and the choice were to come again, I should do the same. It would have been cruel, such a life as mine in a mechanic’s cottage; it would have been cruel and unjust to deprive my darling boy of this grand heritage.”
Such is the sophistry people use in cheating themselves into the belief that they have acted right in casting aside their natural ties for the blandishments of the world—for the acquirement of wealth and power. We shall see in good time if these brought happiness and a contented mind.
CHAPTER LIV.
PEACE’S LIFE AT SHEFFIELD—THE ROBBERY AT CROOKES-MOOR HOUSE—TRIAL AND CONVICTION.
While Tom Gatliffe was bearing up as best he could against the deep affliction that had fallen on him, and while his wife was being fêted, flattered, and spoiled, Charles Peace, the burglar, was pursuing his own erratic course in his native town of Sheffield.
He returned thither with a considerable amount of cash, the produce of his Denmark-hill burglary.
His mother, at this time, was in a state of poverty, and his sister was in indigent circumstances.
Peace at once hastened to relieve their immediate necessities, and in a short time after his return to Sheffield, his funds dwindled down, so that he very shortly became again hard-up.
He eked out his living in all sorts of odd ways. Now mending a clock, and then framing a picture in the intervals, no doubt dealing to some extent with the “fence” of his old comrades in crime.
One night, while playing his violin at a public-house in Sheffield, he met with a girl with whom he had been acquainted when quite a lad.