Page:Confessions of a Thug.djvu/53

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CONFESSIONS OF A THUG.
23

and deck her tomb with flowers every Friday, and bitter were his lamentations over her grave.

Poor Miriam! for that was her name—it was well for you that you died; had you lived, what would now have been your condition! As the wife of a noted Thug, your reputation would have been blasted, and you would have become an outcast!

Sahib! she never knew what Ismail was. He was to her a man in prosperous circumstances. She had everything she could desire, and not a want remained unsatisfied; and so deeply and well laid were his plans, that she would never have known, till the day of his capture, that she was the wife of a professed murderer!

I pass over the next four or five years of my life, as I can remember no incident in them worth relating. Ismail, soon after the death of his wife, removed from the village where he had hitherto resided, and took up his abode in the town of Murnae, which was then in Sindia's possession, and I was put to school with an old man, who taught me to read and write Persian.

As I grew older, I observed that Ismail used, very frequently, to have a number of men at his house by night, and I was naturally cu-