‘I cannot conceive why she should do any such thing,’ remarked Keeling. ‘Father,’ she said, and then she ran to him, stumbling over her dress, and put her hands on his shoulders. A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Frank admitted the force of the argument, and added that he didn't care what name it went by, so long as it carried them safely over. "There's a wonderful deal of excitement in fastening to a whale, and having a fight with him. You have the largest game that a hunter could ask for; you have the cool pure air of the ocean, and the blue waters all about you. A thrill goes through every nerve as you rise to throw the sharp iron into the monster's side, and the thrill continues when he plunges wildly about, and sends the line whistling over. He sinks, and he rises again; he dashes away to windward, and struggles to escape; you hold him fast, and, large as he is in proportion to yourself, you feel that he must yield to you, though, perhaps, not till after a hard battle. At length he lies exhausted, and you approach for the final blow with the lance. Another thrilling moment, another, and another; and if fortune is in your favor, your prize is soon motionless before you. And the man who cannot feel an extra beat of his pulse at such a time must be made of cooler stuff than the most of us. [Pg 78] "Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be Charlie Toliver or something." Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so. Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very low and hidden by a levee. The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her, and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in the ahmy, air you?" He was gone at last; the hall door closed behind him. His footsteps echoed on the pavement a few yards and then stopped. After that the whole world seemed to be wrapped in silence. It was nearly dawn before Leona Lalage crept into bed. She carefully locked away some papers that she had almost committed to heart. There was triumph in her sleepy eyes. "That is so. Otherwise I should not be here tonight. As pictures go, ￡100 is not much. But that picture belonged to my mother's family--in fact, she is descended from the J. Halbin who painted it. It was sold some years ago at a time of great distress. We were sorry. Sentimental, you say, but it would be a bad world without sentiment. My sister, she never ceased to mourn over that picture. When the good time comes she try to get him back. But he has disappeared. Picture my delight when I see him in a little time ago in a shop window. I go home for my chequebook--for I am not a poor man, Herr Bruce, now--and I hurry back to the shop. On my way I send a telegram to my sister to say the picture is found. When I reach the shop you have beaten me by ten minutes." There was nothing more to be done for the present. Ten minutes later Prout was knocking at the door of Lawrence's chambers. A quiet sigh escaped from the listener. She smiled again.
Gradually Lytton Avenue grew quiet again. Leona Lalage stood up so that the light of a lamp outside showed her up in a ghastly fashion. She had lost her fair wig somewhere, her face was all cut and bleeding, her left ankle was painfully sprained. "I don't think you are," René said, with grudging admiration. "Do you know how I got here? We lured Balmayne into a trap under the idea that he was going to meet Ghetti, and I frightened your address out of him. He betrayed you." "Afterwards, which is much more to the point, my niece saw Leon Lalage here. I had better call him your husband, because really there is no denying that. The man was in your house in the morning room, and Hetty saw him. After the business of the notes came out and the story of the Spanish gipsy was told, I knew perfectly well what had taken place. You had called Bruce in to your drunken husband by means of your new motor, with Balmayne playing the deaf mute. After Bruce was gone you killed the man with a knife you procured at Rosser's, in Regent Street. I find the knife in the dry well behind the house." She said no more. The ashy pallor of her skin grew whiter, there was a look of horror, swift as summer lightning, in her splendid eyes. Then she pitched forward, there was a thud and a cloud of dust, and she lay there rigid, motionless. Even a doctor of the Red Cross established at St. Hadelin College had been removed in his white overall and wearing his Red Cross armlet. This was Dr. Labye, who already had rendered signal services to the wounded Germans. In consequence of his detention twenty of them were left in the hospital without medical attendance.... "Very well, now give me those papers." FROM MAASTRICHT TO THE FRENCH FRONTIER The conditions at Louvain were the same as some weeks ago: hunger and misery. Some male prisoners had come back, and also over 150 female prisoners, who for more than a month had been in captivity in the Munster Camp. During the last days a real reign of terror ruled. Hostages were200 continually claimed, and nearly always they took clerics. The week before the people had feared a new destruction. It was said that there had been shooting again, but happily the inquiry showed that a German soldier did it, and he was punished. The shot had been fired in front of the Josephite convent. Thus does the everlasting Greek love of order, definition, limitation, reassert its supremacy over the intelligence of this noble thinker, just as his almost mystical enthusiasm has reached its highest pitch of exaltation, giving him back a world which thought can measure, circumscribe, and control. Here's a four-leaf clover from Camp McBride to bring you good luck and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the Before daybreak, in the doubtful light of waning night, dim masses are visible—grey and purple mountains—mountains shaped like temples, of which two indeed seem to be crowned with low squat towers as if unfinished. Then follow more trays with tufts of jasmine stuck into the heart of a pink rose; and as the guest takes one of these bouquets the servant sprinkles first the flowers and then him with rose-water. A flight of regular steps, hewn in the rock, under the shade of banyans and bamboos, all tangled with flowering creepers, leads straight up to the temple. It is a vast hall, dug out of granite and supported by massive columns, with capitals of a half-flattened spheroidal shape—columns which, seen near, seem far too slender to support the immense mass of the mountain that rises sheer above the cave under a curtain of hanging creepers. The temple opens[Pg 21] to the north, and a very subdued light—like the light from a painted window—filtering through the ficus branches, lends solemnity and enhanced beauty to this titanic architecture. COLOMBO
Rigaud CHAPTER V. THE SPIRITUALISM OF PLOTINUS. “Where did Jeff say he set down?” Deep in the problem he looked up at a sound. "They have expressed the desire that I should convey to you, Colonel—" It was a sheer waste of good ammunition, and it might serve as a signal to the Indians as well; Kirby knew it, and yet he emptied his six-shooter into the deep shadows of the trees where they had vanished, toward the south. Brewster got hunting leave, pending the acceptance of his resignation, and went to the railway. In less than a week he was all but forgotten in a newer interest. [See larger version] He only slowed down when he came up near a corral of other horses, to which he turned for companionship and sympathy. "A thief always gits fetched up with," said Shorty, in a tone of profound moralizing. "But since it had to go I'm glad one o' our own boys got it. I snatched another and a better one that night from the Ohio boys. I'm awful sorry you got hurt. Was it bad?"
He and Shorty were down on their faces as he spoke. The others obeyed more slowly and clumsily. The rebel volley cut the limbs and bushes over their heads, and whistled viciously through the damp air and the darkness. "I know we was," whimpered little Pete as he capped a gun and handed it to Shorty; "but we couldn't stay when we heard the yelling and shooting. We was so scared that we was afraid to stay there, so we hunted you up, and—" "You will each of you rise, hold up your right hand and be sworn," said the Judge-Advocate, and they each pronounced after him the prolix and ponderous oath prescribed by the regulations: Then he had to define "coward" for Cadnan—and from "coward" he progressed to another new word, "freedom." That was a big word but Cadnan approached it without fear, and without any preconception. "Johnny," she said, and her hands reached out for him blindly. He saw, incredibly, tears like jewels at the corners of her eyes. "Johnny—" But the planet had natives on it already. The natives were called Alberts, and here is a picture of them. Aren't they funny-looking? He called: "Dara." It was hard to hear his own voice. There was no answer, and he had expected none: but he had had to call. Reuben had no sympathy with these fancies when they took his son out of hard-working common sense into idle-handed, wander-footed dreams, or when perhaps he found them scribbled on the back of his corn accounts. He did not spare the rod, but Albert had all the rather futile obstinacy of weak-willed people, and could be neither persuaded nor frightened out of his dreams. Who has not loaded ye with curses sore
Pete stood clear, as the two combatants closed. Neither knew much of the game. Realf had been born too late for boxing to have been considered a necessary part of his education, and Reuben had been taught in an old school—the school of Bendigo and Deaf Burke—mighty bashers, who put their confidence in their strength, despised finesse, and counted their victories in pints of blood. Alice stood in the middle of the room, her face bloomed with dusk and firelight, her hands stretched out towards him.... About an hour later Reuben was down again at[Pg 320] Handshut's cottage, but this time a change had worked itself. The door hung wide open—and the place was empty. He went through the two miserable little rooms, but there was no one, and nowhere for anybody to hide. The remains of a meal of bread and tea were on the table, and a fire of sticks was dying on the hearth. The lovers had flown—to laugh at him from a safe distance. He mumbled curses as he dressed, and bathed his head in cold water. He did not deserve this visitation—usually he regarded an after-debauch headache as one of the marvellous acts of Providence, in which he, like most sailormen, believed with a faith which though conveniently removed from works was deeply tinged with admiration. But yesterday he had not been really drunk—why, he could remember nearly everything that had happened, the dancing, the songs, the girls, how he had walked home singing "Rio Bay," and how he had met that queer girl at the farmhouse gate, and thought he was going to have some fun with her and been disappointed. The brothers were left alone, except for Harry, who was busy imitating Albert's cough, much to his own satisfaction. "I'm out of practice, or I shouldn't have skinned myself like this—ah, here's Coalbran's trap. Perhaps he'll give you a lift, ma'am, into Peasmarsh." "Not if we stick to the farm. Did you notice that ring on his little finger?" "Back! Back with f?ather! Not me! Now let's hear some more about him—does he ever speak to you of your mother?" "Yes, this is the gratitude of these base-born vassals; but, Calverley, what priest presumed to wed them?" The monk made a lowly obeisance as he approached the abbot, and when desired to make known his business, he detailed in a brief but perspicuous manner the charge against Edith. The superior listened with calm attention; but it was evident that the Baron de Boteler was not one with whom he would feel disposed to interfere. "Does he indeed hold such opinions, my Lord of Canterbury?" asked Lancaster. But it was not merely Holgrave that the monk was now addressing; two or three passers-by had been attracted. The monk was recognized, and these were commissioned to whisper secretly in the bondman's ear, that he who had baptized their children, and breathed the prayer of faith over their sick beds, and who had wandered through the land, gladdening with the bright promises of hope the soul of the weary and the oppressed, had come once more amongst them to speak of personal enfranchisement, and of rent, instead of the accustomed service for the land they might hold. Father John then withdrew with Holgrave by a private path, to avoid any further interruption.
