The Sweets Ranch

The Sweets Ranch ⚡With its position as one of Asia's leading bookmakers, is always a meeting place for serious bettors.⚡ Caleb placed his empty pipe in one pocket, fished in another and drew out a plug of Radiant Star chewing tobacco. He took a generous bite from one corner of the plug and champed it meditatively.,"Gee! how am I to know; it's right here somewheres, though.",The little leaning vessel, diminished by the distance from which she was surveyed into a size fit only to be manned by Liliputian sailors, crept like a small white cloud along the placid water of Old Harbour, and rounding the pier hauled the wind for a south-westerly course. They watched her as she streamed onwards with a sparkle as pretty as a rainbow at her fore-foot, and a short scope of trembling lustre astern as though she towed a length of satin. A few minutes before she disappeared from the sight of those who viewed her from the lawn of Old Harbour House, past the bluff or round of cliff on which stood the dropsical old lighthouse, she dipped her flag manifestly in response to a hidden salutation, and scarcely had she vanished when there stole out from the edge of the cliff round which she had gone, the slanting figure of a large three-masted schooner with the English ensign at her peak. She was steering directly for Old Harbour. Though she had evidently come a long journey, she made upon those silver-white rippling waters a far handsomer figure than the brig. She was clothed from truck[Pg 81] to waterway with sails which reflected the light of the morning with something of the splendour of polished metal. Her hull was black, but she was inclined sufficiently by the breeze to reveal a narrow breadth of copper sheathing, which sprang pulses of wet dazzling light upon the eye in keen flashes like gun fire.,"She'll come, you think?",She sighed; the distress of her heart saddened her face with a meaning as of tears.，"But what is to happen to him," said Lucy, "if you carry him back to England? I would rather hear," she cried, with an emphasis which may have borrowed note and complexion from the impulse of her late impersonations of madness, "of the Minorca having sunk and carried him down to the bottom of the sea with her, than live to witness his degradation and perhaps his death and the misery and the broken-heartedness that must come to his dear old father, if you do not prove his friend, and help to reclaim a nature that in its essence is beautiful, and a fulfilment of the purest woman's ideal."，"Very well, Walter, you may go home and get a pail of water. My experience with school wells," glancing out of the window to the blue pump, "has been that during the holidays they become a veritable death trap for frogs, mice and other vermin."，Billy passed on slowly after his cows, up through the spicy pines to the pebbled beach of the lake, pondering for a solution to the biggest problem his young mind had ever had to wrestle with. He seated himself on the prow of the big fish-boat, his eyes on the thirsty cattle now belly-deep in the blue water, drinking their fill. Along the shore stood the big reels used for holding the seines and nets when not in use. The twine had been newly coal-tarred and the pungent odor of the tar mingled pleasingly with the breath of pine and the sweet freshness of the sun-warmed water."It is wonderful to think," said Miss Acton,[Pg 97] "how far a ship like this will go. I suppose she would go around the world."

"As I turned after 'anging the lantern up I found her stannin' behind me with a knife in her hand; one of the knives I took in the tray, and didn't miss when I cleared away. She says to me, speakin' through her teeth like as though she was tryin' to talk whilst holding on to something with her mouth, and in the strangest, thinnest voice I ever heard in all my life, like when you're trying to file down the head of a nail, 'What do you want here, you loathsome creature? You come fresh from your forest. Go back before I kill you!' And she flourished the knife which glittered in her 'and as though it was a-fire, on which I ran out, sir.","If there was nothing to fear from the enemy's ships," she said, "and if the sea was always calm and the breeze gentle and mild, I believe I might wish to make a voyage in the Minorca to the West Indies.",He glanced at the door. Mrs. Keeler's square form interposed itself staunchly between him and that means of exit. His wild eyes strayed to the face of his chum. Maurice was grinning a glad, if swollen, grin. There was nothing to do but face the music.,"The very look of that hole," said the old lady, directing her eyes at the companion-way, "makes me feel as though if I descended I[Pg 98] should suffer all that nearly killed me in my voyage from Dover to Calais.",Billy led him outside and turned the light of the lantern full on his face. "Harry," he said, sternly, "where are you gettin' all this whisky?","Listen thin." Harry touched Billy's arm. "Ivery day since I made me discovery an' hid box and jugs in a new spot have I visited that sour-faced ould Spencer, and I've said: 'Supposin' one should discover your stolen goods, Caleb Spencer, would ye be willin' t' let what little whisky there was left go to the finder?","Is it?",Harry laughed and again touched Billy's arm. "To-night ut's go back to him I wull an' the question put to him once more, an' this night, plase God, he wull likely say, 'All av ut, Harry, all av ut.'","Nobody," echoed Fatty, "nobody but Bill.","And you are so fine an actress as to have been able to persuade so intelligent a man that you were actually mad?" enquired Captain Acton with some astonishment.,Mr Lawrence was for a few days very uneasy, but uneasy is a mild term to express the state of a man's mind that starts at a look or an exclamation, who fancies he is whispered about when two go past him talking, who expects that every man who approaches him is going to speak to him about the letter he has found, who imagines that every look that his father fastens upon him is a prelude to a tremendous attack, who is willing to attribute the silence of Captain Acton to the consideration of what steps in the face of such an enormity should be taken by him against the son of his old friend Sir William Lawrence.,He squared his shoulders and held out his hand. The pointer came down with all the strength that the man dared put behind it. Johnston peered closely into the boy's face. It was white and quivering but it still wore a smile..