Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/115

 nights. But what choice had I? Cast forth to the gutter's miring in the susceptible years of infancy, a girl of the town's byblow, what choice had I, in heaven's name? If I may not live as I would, I must live as I may; in emperors and parsons and sewer-diggers and cheese-mites that claim is equally allowed."

"You are a thief?" she asked, pensively.

"Let us put it, rather, that I have proved in life's hard school an indifferent Latinist, by occasionally confounding meum with tuum."

"A murderer?"

"Something of the sort might be my description in puritanic mouths. You know at least what happened at The Cat and Hautbois."

("But what in the world had happened there?" Kennaston wondered.)

"And yet—" The sweet voice marveled.

"And yet I have saved you from Lord Umfraville? Ah, madam, Providence labors with quaint instruments, dilapidating Troy by means of a wood rocking-horse, and loosing sin into the universe through a half-eaten apple. Nay, I repeat, I am not all base; and I have read somewhere