convenience with respect to the procuring of books; but, as my
memory was retentive, I frequently translated or modelled my narratives upon a
reading of some years before. By a fatality for which I did not exactly know how
to account, my thoughts frequently led me to the histories of celebrated
robbers; and I retailed from time to time incidents and anecdotes of Cartouche,
Gusman d'Alfarache and other memorable worthies, whose carreer was terminated
upon the gallows or the scaffold.
    In the mean time a retrospect to my own situation, rendered a perseverance
even in this industry, difficult to be maintained. I often threw down my pen in
an extacy of despair. Sometimes, for whole days together I was incapable of
action, and sunk into a sort of partial stupor too wretched to be described.
Youth and health however enabled me, from time to time, to get the better of my
dejection; and to rouse myself to something like a gaiety, which, if it had been
permanent, might have made this interval of my story tolerable to my
reflections.
 

                                   Chapter IX

While I was thus endeavouring to occupy and provide for the intermediate period
till the violence of the pursuit after me might be abated, a new source of
danger opened upon me of which I had no previous suspicion. Gines, the thief who
had been expelled from captain Raymond's gang, had fluctuated during the last
years of his life, between the two professions of a violator of the laws and a
retainer to their administration. He had originally devoted himself to the
first, and probably his initiation in the mysteries of thieving qualified him to
be peculiarly expert in the profession of a thief-taker, a profession he had
adopted not from choice, but necessity. In this employment his reputation was
great, though perhaps not equal to his merits; for it happens here, as in other
departments of human society, that, however the subalterns may furnish wisdom
and skill, the principals exclusively possess the eclat. He was exercising this
art in a very prosperous manner, when it happened by some accident, that one or
two of his atchievements, previous to his having shaken off the dregs of
unlicensed depredation, were in danger of becoming subjects of public attention.
Having had repeated intimations of this, he thought it prudent to decamp, and it
was during this period of his retreat that he entered into the - gang.
    Such was the history of this man antecedently to his being placed in the
situation in which I had first encountered him. At the time of that encounter he
was a veteran of captain Raymond's gang;