bureau unlocked, and said, "Ruin me if you will, but no debts. There
is money in those drawers,--they are unlocked." That trust would forever
have cured of extravagance a youth with a high and delicate sense of
honor: the pupil of the Gitanos did not understand the trust; he thought
it conveyed a natural, though ungracious, permission to take out what he
wanted,--and he took! To Roland this seemed a theft; and a theft of the
coarsest kind; but when he so said, the son started indignant, and saw
in that which had been so touching an appeal to his honor but a trap to
decoy him into disgrace. In short, neither could understand the other.
Roland forbade his son to stir from the house; and the young man the
same night let himself out, and stole forth into the wide world, to
enjoy or defy it in his own wild way.

It would be tedious to follow him through his various adventures and
experiments on fortune (even if I knew them all, which I do not). And
now putting altogether aside his right name, which he had voluntarily
abandoned, and not embarrassing the reader with the earlier aliases
assumed, I shall give to my unfortunate kinsman the name by which I
first knew him, and continue to do so until,--Heaven grant the time may
come!--having first redeemed, he may reclaim his own. It was in joining
a set of strolling players that Vivian became acquainted with Peacock;
and that worthy, who had many strings to his bow, soon grew aware of
Vivian's extraordinary skill with the cue, and saw therein a better mode
of making their joint fortunes than the boards of an itinerant Thespis
furnished to either. Vivian listened to him, and it was while their
intimacy was most fresh that I met them on the highroad. That chance
meeting produced (if I may be allowed to believe his assurance)
a strong, and for the moment a salutary, effect upon Vivian. The
comparative innocence and freshness of a boy's mind were new to him;
the elastic, healthful spirits with which those gifts were accompanied
startled him, by the contrast to his own forced gayety and secret gloom.
And this boy was his own cousin!

Coming afterwards to London, he adventured inquiry at the hotel in
the Strand at which I had given my address; learned where we were;
and passing one night in the street, saw my uncle at the window,--to
recognize and to fly from him. Having then some money at his disposal,
he broke off abruptly from the set in which he had been thrown. He had
resolved to