My Betwayl

My Betwayl VI. "Nelson!" cried Captain Acton, in a voice subdued by reverence for the name it pronounced, addressing his daughter. "We must run down and have a look at him. The deviation need not be above two or three miles, which will not cause us to lose sight of the Minorca by diverting us from her track. Make all sail again, Captain Weaver, and head for that flag-ship. You can see her: she is to windward of the ship with the stun-sails.","She is lovely, isn't she?" she replied ardently. "But her dress isn't half so gorgeous as yours," she added heartily.,"Assuredly," replied Etwald, fixing a piercing glance on the young man. "Do you refuse?",He was already several paces away, anxious to overtake the wagon. Billy stood looking after him, a frown on his brow. "Gibson's Grove," he repeated. "So that's where Gibson's Grove is!" Then the message which the strangers had sent by old Harry might have had some significance, after all.,That is how the people came to possess the Worm Pipe. That pipe belongs to the band of Piegans known as the Worm People.，“That’s enough, Billy. Jimmy Dorr and George Packard are coming.” She was a sensible woman, yet she disliked to expose her boy to Jimmy’s caustic tongue. But Billy was equal to more than Jimmy.，That's just what I mean—love boiled down and sugared over is apt to get an explosive flavour, and one had better be careful with that kind if one is timid; which I'm not. As I said, also, I am ready for a little more of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had well boiled his own last paragraph. It snapped; and I jumped and gasped. I almost thought I didn't quite like it, and was going to read it over again to see, when I saw a procession coming over from Dr. John's, and I laid the bombshell down on the bench.，"I am--as you know--a physician, but I am also what you may not know--a man of genius. I have brains, but no money; and for experiments in chemistry, money, I regret to say, is extremely necessary. This being the case, I have needed money, and that in large quantities, all my life. As I could not make it for myself--not having the mercantile instinct--I resolved to gain it by making a rich marriage. For many years I have traveled the world. Like Ulysses, I have known men and cities, and some years ago, Chance--a deity at whose shrine I always pay my devotions--led me to Barbadoes. While there I was attracted, as I always am, by the weird and mysterious, by the superstitions of the African race. I studied the cult of Obi, the belief of the Voodoo stone, and by a strange train of circumstances, which I need not relate, I gained possession of that powerful talisman which is known to all negroid America. With this stone in my possession, I was king--so to speak--of all the black race. This power I determined to use to my own advantage, and through it to make a rich marriage.CHAPTER X.

"Is that the fashion here? If—if you loved a man, would you be faithful to him forever?","Why not?" answered the major, quietly. "To my mind, he needs more pity than poor Maurice. The lad was driven mad by jealousy, and he was worked on by Dido to commit the crime. The cause of all these troubles, Mr. Inspector, is not Dr. Etwald, but that black witch. I wish she could be caught.",Accustomed as an old campaigner to sleep lightly. Major Jen was on his feet in an instant, and again heard that terrible shriek. It seemed to come from the direction of the high-road, and thinking that some evil was being done, Jen, without loss of time, raced across the lawn and into the avenue. In a few minutes he arrived at the gate, and stepped out into the white and dusty road: a black mass was lying some distance down, and toward this ran Jen with an indefinable sense of evil clutching at his heartstrings. The black mass proved to be the body of a man, cold and still. Jen turned the corpse over and recoiled. The dead man was Maurice Alymer.,“You bet,” was the heartfelt answer. “I thought you were a goner sure. But where is the boat?”,“Oh, New York has very little on us up here,” she said. “What with a cold storage plant and an ice factory, we don’t want for anything.”,“Oh, no,” he sighed; “I suppose duty is the first business; but duty is such a narrow, knock-you-down little word.” His voice was tense and hard.,"A scheme," he had said; and then in a moment the right words flash across her brain. "A brilliant chance, a splendid scheme." What words for an honest man to use! Could he be honest? Was there any flaw, any damning clause anywhere in all this careful plot, so cleverly constructed to bring ruin upon the heads of these people who have crept into her tender heart?,It was not long before the brig that was chasing on the schooner's weather-quarter swelled and paled in distortion with the encompassing thickness, and presently she was a pallid square, and then she became a smudge, after which the rain curtain dropped upon her, and she vanished. Then it was that Captain Weaver luffed the schooner to windward of her course, and she went ahead with flattened-in sheets, leaning to it and severing the flint-coloured billow with her sharp tooth of fore-foot: and so she held on, until, had the weather cleared, the brig, even had she taken in her stun-sails and hauled the wind with yards sweated fore and aft, would have been found dead to leeward and far away beyond all dream of prize money amongst the French crew.,"What do you think?" she cried, her eyes popping with pleasurable excitement. "The Haldens are in town for over Sunday, and the girls are going to the party tomorrow night! They've just landed yesterday and were in the customer's hunting up suits when I ran across them.",The woman raised her hands in consternation.,At this juncture there was a knock at the door. It was Howard Eliot who had called for Nell.,CHAPTER IX MOVING THE MENAGERIE.