घड़ी ब्रिज

घड़ी ब्रिज Download +88K She smiled and kissed him, and then said: "But oh, sir, his poor old father! You have regained me, your only child, but Sir William, an old, a good man, an upright, a beautiful character, must lose his son, an only child too.","You have been half-starved in that brig," said Captain Acton, searching his daughter's face, and running his eyes over her dress.,It was as Captain Acton said: the Saucy brig-of-war was getting under weigh, and it might be safely concluded for no other purpose than to exercise the crew by an off-shore trip. Captain Acton and the two ladies stood watching the little toy figure away down in the river's mouth. Sail was made with man-of-war despatch; all the clews were sheeted home together, the yards at the same time mounting, so that all at once it seemed the little vessel broke into a broad, bright, shapely glare of canvas, slightly leaning from the breeze as she softly crept round and pointed her bowsprit seaward, and whitening the water under her with the power of a floating body of radiance.,"There now," he cried, when at last the clearing was reached, and the whistle was tucked away in the bosom of his flannel shirt, "I'll be partin' wid ye now, byes, fer a spell. Over to Spencer's store I'll be goin', to glimpse the jye in his eyes, and axe him to trust me fer a few groceries I'll be needin' till me next allowance arrives from the home land. And ut's no doubt I have in me mind that he'll do ut gladly, fer ut's a tinder man he is at heart an' no mistake.","Kowakk," he gurgled, which meant "I thought I knew you, Miss, but I guess I don't."，Mrs. Wilson sighed. "Well, if you're sure you don't need these here salts—" she lifted the glass and stood hesitating, "why, I don't s'pose there's re'lly any call fer you to take 'em. It seems too bad to waste 'em, though."，"Nary a word but I asked him what he intended to do with the Scroggie hardwoods. He told me that he had sold it to a lumber company. He says there'll be a big camp of cutters and sawyers down here this winter. I said I supposed he'd be goin' back to the States jest as soon as he got things cleared up here, an' you ought to see the queer look he gave me.，Half an hour later when Mrs. Keeler carrying two bowls of steaming bread and milk ascended the stairs Billy alone sat up to reach for it."What?" The deacon gripped the boy's arm and shook him. "What's that you say?" he questioned eagerly.

Keeler roused himself from his abstraction and resumed: "Right next to the Stanhope farm there stood about a thousand acres of the purtiest hardwoods you ever clap't an eye on, sir. An ol' hermit of a drunken Scotchman, Scroggie by name, owned that land. He lived in a dirty little cabin an' was so mean even the mice was scared to eat the food he scrimped himself on. He had money too, lots an' lots of gold money. I've seen it myself. He kept it hid somewhere.,The last word was drowned in a resounding "smack." Billy had delivered one of his lightning, straight-arm punches fair on the sneering lips of the new boy. Scroggie staggered back, recovered his balance, and threw himself on the defensive in time to block Billy's well-aimed right to the neck.,"Nothing of the sort. I am sure of it!" exclaimed Miss Acton. "Who hears of such outrages happening here?","Pray step in, Mr Greyquill, and be seated!","You do not wish him to be hanged for piracy, even if abduction be not a hanging[Pg 382] matter," said Captain Acton with a smile in his eyes as he met the Admiral's.,A few minutes later Billy tumbled into the blind. "Quick," he cried, as he drew on his coat. "They're nigh done fer. We've gotta keep 'em movin'. Good! I see you've heated the tea; I'll jest take it along. We'll leave gun an' decoys right here with Moll to watch 'em, 'cause we're likely to have our hands full. Are you ready, teacher?",A full moon was veiling lake and bay in sheen of silvery whiteness as Hinter and Erie went out into the August night. Eastward the long pine covered Point swept a dark line against the grey, shadowy rush-lands. Somewhere among the hidden ponds mallards and grey ducks were quacking contentedly as they fed. A swamp coon raised his almost human cry as he crept the sandy shores in search of the frogs whose tanging notes boomed from the boglands.,With wildly beating heart Billy passed through the pines, the twilight gloom adding to his feeling of awe. Croaker had become strangely silent and now flitted before him like a black spirit of a crow. It was almost a relief when at last the tumble-down shack grew up in its tangle of vines and weeds. Once more into the daylight and Croaker took up the interrupted thread of his conversation with himself. He ducked and side-stepped and gave voice to expressions which Billy had never heard him use before.,"Yep, I saw it last spring—in the Eau rice beds, it was. I was tryin' to find a blue-winged teal's nest. Saw the drake trail off an' knowed the duck must be settin' somewhere on the high land close beside the pond. As I was standin' still, lookin' about, this little water snake come swimmin' 'cross a mushrat run. Jest then I saw a shadder cross the reeds, an' a fish-hawk swooped down an' made a grab at the snake. The snake dived an' come up close to shore. The hawk wheeled an' swooped ag'in. This time the water was too shallow fer snakie to get clear away. The hawk grabbed him in his claws an' started up with him. 'Goodbye, little snake,' I thought, an' jest then I noticed that the hawk was havin' trouble; fer one thing, he wasn't flyin' straight, an' he was strikin' with his curved beak without findin' anythin'. Pretty soon he started saggin' down to the reeds. I jumped into the punt an' made fer the spot where I thought he'd come down. Jest as I got there he splashed into the shallow water. I stood up in the punt, an' then I saw what had happened. The little water-snake had coiled round the hawk's neck an' had kept its head close under his throat. You know that a water snake has two little saw teeth, one on each side of the upper jaw. I've often wondered what good a pair of teeth like that could be to 'em, but I don't any more, 'cause that little snake had cut that hawk's throat with them snags an' saved himself.","I wish, madam," he said, "I could see you seated more comfortably. But I wish more that you could see into my heart, what I feel there, and how my pain is infinitely keener than yours, because my love for you, my inexorable passion for you, my determination to win you and make you my own for life, paralysing the efforts of those who would keep us asunder, make the very soul within me shrink to behold you so uneasy, so unhappy, so reluctant to cast upon me one look—even one look—to persuade me that my stratagem was based upon my conviction that I am not[Pg 319] indifferent to you, nay, that deep in your spirit your love for me dwells as a jewel in a casket that yourself dare not open, though willing that I should.",Mr Lawrence walked on. He thought of old Greyquill when he passed the place where he had stopped to talk. He crossed the quaint old bridge duplicated in the river, which streamed with becalmed surface up here and mirrored with the precision of a looking-glass the hues and shapes of every bird that swept the glassy surface for an insect, and gaining a rich lane formed by seven or eight hundred years of growth, for a monastery had stood here and a knight had had his manor where now the land was without relic of stone or brick; but the vegetation left by these people flourished, and though not above half a mile in length that lane formed one of the most glorious, soothing, enfolding, impulse-creating walks in all that country-side which abounded in little paradisaical reaches of a like kind; I say Mr Lawrence crossed the bridge, and emerging from the lane struck the high-road, and presently gained his father's cottage.,"Did you talk sell, Tom?" asked Ringold, anxiously..