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Two weeks had passed since the robbery of the Twin Oaks store and that which he and Maurice had planned to do towards finding the Scroggie will and capturing the thieves had, through dire necessity, been abandoned. Sickness had claimed Maurice just when he was most needed. For days Billy had lived a sort of trancelike existence; had gone about acting queerly, refusing his meals and paying little attention to anybody or anything. Next day was Sunday and Billy did not like Sundays. They meant the scrubbing of his face, ears and neck with "Old Brown Windsor" soap until it fairly cracked if he so much as smiled, and being lugged off with his parents and Anse to early forenoon Sunday School in the little frame church in the Valley. There was nothing interesting about Sunday School; it was the same old hum-drum over and over again—same lessons, same teachers, same hymns, same tunes; with Deacon Ringold's assertive voice cutting in above all the other voices both in lessons and singing and with Mrs. Scraff's shrill treble reciting, for her class's edification, her pet verse: "Am I nothing to thee, all ye who pass by?"—only Mrs. Scraff always improvised more or less on the scriptures, and usually threw the verse defiantly from her in this form: "You ain't nuthin to me, all you who pass me by." This was enough for Mr Lawrence, who perfectly understood that all the sentiments which were likely to be delivered at that table he had heard over and over again. He rose, made a bow to the landlord and the company, and walked from the room to the adjacent room, which was made a reading-room of by the pilots, smacksmen, and others, and sitting down at the long table, took a sheet of some[Pg 130] paper which was there for the accommodation of the frequenters, and after thinking deeply, undisturbed by the sound of singing which started next door, he began to write in pencil, obviously making a draft of a communication he proposed to copy there, or more probably elsewhere..
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kez_ h (Kez_h)
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Before there was time to figure out who it was that was coming, the hoofbeats and jangling of accouterments foretold the approach of the troopers. A moment later the soldiers trotted down the street under the electric lights that had been turned on when the trouble started. In their midst were a number of sullen looking Mexicans, evidently prisoners.I tried logging in using my phone number and I
was supposed to get a verification code text,but didn't
get it. I clicked resend a couple time, tried the "call
me instead" option twice but didn't get a call
either. the trouble shooting had no info on if the call
me instead fails.There was
“What’s the rush?” asked Bob. “Found out something?”
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Conrad
As Billy rounded a curve in the road he met the cattle. Anson was driving them. "You needn't mind turnin' back, Bill," he said. "I don't mind waterin' 'em fer you." Of this man, a toothless salt whose face was like an old potato, dark with the weather of[Pg 34] vanished days and covered with warts, an affecting story was told: it was evening, and the room was full of seafaring men, and this man, whose name was John Halliburton, sat at the table with a long clay pipe trembling in one hand and a glass of hot rum and water in reach of the other. Several songs had been sung by members of the company, and some one, by way of a joke, asked old John to oblige. To the amazement of everybody the old man put down his pipe, took off his hat, out of which he drew a large red handkerchief with which he polished his face, and then, fixing his lustreless eyes upon the man who had asked him to sing, broke into a song in a strange, quivering, fitful note, as though you should hear a drunken sailor singing in a vault. The assembly was hushed into deep stillness. It was certainly a most unparalleled circumstance for old John to sing. In the middle of the second verse, some old nautical ballad popular fifty years before, he stopped, put his handkerchief into his hat, and his hat upon his head, and resumed his pipe, gazing vacantly at the man who had asked him to sing. "Wounded whistlers aren't as hard to retrieve as redhead or bluebill," said Stanhope. The light-house keeper, who lived with his daughter in a comfortable house on the extreme end of the Point, had always been glad to welcome Hinter to his isolated loneliness. With an invalid's self-centeredness, he believed that it was to relieve the monotony of his existence that this man paid him periodical visits. He did not dream that his daughter, Erie, named after the lake, whose blue lay deep in her eyes and whose moods were of herself a part, was the real attraction which drew Hinter to their home. Indeed it would have taken a much more astute observer than the man who had been keeper of the light for more than thirty years to have observed this. Never by look, word or sign had Hinter shown that in this slender, golden-haired girl, whose laughter was the sweetest note in the world—this girl who could trim a sail in biting gale and swim the wide, deep channel when tempest angered it to clutching under-currents—was more to him than just a glad, natural product of her world. Always his manner towards her had been one of kindly respect. In time she grew ashamed of the distrust she had on first acquaintance intuitively felt for him. He was good to her father and considerate of her. He talked interestingly of the big outside world and described the cities he had visited. Her father liked him and always looked forward to his visits, and with a sick man's petulance grumbled if Hinter failed to come on his regular nights..
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