But I suppose I was fated.
I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a wife in prospect to support.

I suppose if I were to write down all the decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for them.

I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and then I'd do big things.

But that isn't the way of the world; and so I feel that a morning like this, and the love of a girl like that" (he nodded towards the horizon into which Christine had gone) "ought to make a man sing a Te Deum.

And yet this evening, or to-morrow evening, or the next, I'll steal five thousand dollars, if it can be done, and risk my neck in doing it--to say nothing of family honour, and what not." He got up from the window, went to his trunk, opened it, and, taking out a pistol, examined it carefully, cocking and uncorking it, and after loading it, and again trying the trigger, put it back again.