“Where in the name of wonder have you been, Jack?” he asked, surveying his nephew by the light of the candle.
“I've been shut up, uncle,—boarded and lodged for nothing,—by some people who liked my company better than I liked theirs. But to-night I made out to escape, and hero I am. I'll tell you all about it in the morning. Just now I'm confoundedly hungry, and if there's anything in the pantry, I'll ask permission to go in there a few minutes.”
“I guess you'll find something, Jack. Take the candle with you. Thank God, you're back alive. We've been very anxious about you.”
CHAPTER XXII. MR. JOHN SOMERVILLE.
PEG had been thinking.
This was the substance of her reflections. Ida, whom she had kidnapped for certain purposes of her own, was likely to prove an (sic) incumbrance rather than a source of profit. The child, her suspicions awakened in regard to the character of the money she had been employed to pass off, was no longer available for that purpose. So firmly resolved was she not to do what was wrong, that threats and persuasions were alike unavailing. Added to this was the danger of her encountering some one sent in search of her by the Crumps.
Under these circumstances, Peg bethought herself of the ultimate object which she had proposed to herself in kidnapping Ida—that of extorting money from a man who is now to be introduced to the reader.
John Somerville occupied a suite of apartments in a handsome lodging-house on Walnut Street. A man wanting yet several years of forty, he looked a greater age. Late hours and dissipation, though kept within respectable limits, had left their traces on his face. At twenty-one he inherited a considerable fortune, which, combined with some professional practice (for he was a lawyer, and not without ability), was quite sufficient to support him handsomely, and leave a considerable surplus every year. But, latterly, he had contracted a passion for gaming, and however shrewd he might be naturally, he could hardly be expected to prove a match for the wily habitues of the gaming-table, who had marked him as their prey.
The evening before he is introduced to the reader's notice he had, passed till a late hour at a fashionable gambling-house, where he had lost heavily. His reflections, on awakening, were not of the pleasantest. For the first time, within fifteen years, he realized the folly and imprudence of the course he had pursued. The evening previous he had lost a thousand dollars, for which he had given his I O U. Where to raise this money, he did not know. He bathed his aching head, and cursed his ill luck, in no measured terms. After making his toilet, he rang the bell, and ordered breakfast.