BBC sport

BBC sport The platform provides customer support through multiple channels, including live chat, email and phone, ensuring that all player issues are resolved promptly.⭐️ "So we give him the money but we made him give us what Jim calls a regular bill o' sale receipt fer it. An' so, you see, Ma, we've got Mr. Johnston there, an' he won't ever lay the rod on poor ol' Thomas no more.","Joe, I'm ashamed of you," chided the white-faced deacon. "Come along to my house, all of you, and I'll have wife make us a strong cup of tea.","Why, Captain Acton's daughter, Miss Lucy Acton!",A little further on Billy came face to face with Hinter. "How are you, Billy?" spoke the man, pleasantly. "Still driving the cows down to the lake for water, I see.",Billy kicked his hat high in air and turned a handspring. "Tell me all about it, Harry. You saw 'em married, did you?"，Slowly Billy lowered the charm and looked at Harry. The old man sat, puffing his short pipe, a derisive grin on his unshaven lips.，Just here the whistle of bob-white sounded from a little distance along the trail.，"But, Billy, the wind! You'd better not go.""Well," she cried in a voice of tremulous eagerness, "have you heard of her?"

"I am sure I do not know what is good for rheumatism," said Miss Acton, with the petulance that attends a sudden anxiety of benevolence. "It is a most troublesome disease. You may rub and rub, and you only make it fly to another place, and often rubbing takes the skin off. I will send him some sulphur to put in his stockings, and I will see what else there is to be done for the poor man." And here, looking over her glasses again at Mr Lawrence, she said: "Pray, can you tell me how Mrs Bigg is, sir?",At this point Mr Lawrence, who judged that as much had been said as was likely to interest him, put his foot over the coaming and passed on to the deck, walking, without heeding the presence of the two men, to the binnacle stand. He inspected the compass, and then looked along the deck. Only one figure was now visible, and he had started to stump the planks in the true deep-sea look-out fashion.,"What you talkin' 'bout, Bill? What thing? Who's it been clawin'? Hurry up, tell me.","It is you, my dear Dick, and old companion, mess-mate and friend, with whom I have enjoyed many a jaunt to which I could never[Pg 213] recur without passionately lamenting the days that are no more, who will help me in this desperate undertaking. I propose to navigate the vessel, not to Kingston, Jamaica, to which port she ought to be bound, but to the port in which you live, Rio de Janeiro. By a ruse which must prove successful, I think, I shall inveigle Miss Lucy Acton on board, and everything being ready, shall make sail immediately after she is carefully confined in my cabin. I have had a cabin set apart for my own use, which I represented to Captain Acton was to serve as a sick-bay. This drama has been well rehearsed. When far out at sea the crew will be summoned aft. I shall read some pretended sealed orders from Captain Acton, requiring me to carry the ship to Rio de Janeiro, and to sell her, if possible, after discharging the mate and crew, who will receive from Captain Acton, on application, treble the amount of their wages they would have got for sailing the vessel to Kingston. I shall also take care to destroy the ship's papers. And my story will be that I was overhauled by an American cruiser, who sent an officer on board. He examined the box of papers and took it away to show to his Captain, as he considered them unsatisfactory. The cruiser then braced her main top-sail yard to the wind and sailed away with the box of papers. On my arrival, we will consult together as to the safest course to be adopted for the sale of the ship and cargo, by which time I have no doubt the lady will have agreed to marry me either for love,[Pg 214] or because she has been placed in a situation which must render marriage imperative to her in the name of honour. With the money which I shall make, thanks to you, through this business, I will pay off all my debts in England, and Lucy Acton being my wife, or promising me her hand, I may count with absolute certainty upon the forgiveness of her father, who is not likely to abandon his only child for a behaviour that was no fault of hers, and the rest must be left to time.,The Admiral spoke with a steady face and with a steady voice. He was giving a version of the story which to all intents and purposes was true, and there was nothing in the relation, as previously devised, to alarm his conscience as a gentleman and a man of honour by inaccuracy.,Billy thought a moment. "Say, how'd you like to go out in my punt, on Levee Crick? I kin show you some cute baby mushrats an' some dandy black-birds' nests. It's not far away. We go 'cross that big fallow and through a strip o' hardwoods an' then we climb a stump fence—an' there's the crick. It's an awful fine crick, an' plumb full of bass an' pike. Say, will you go?","What you want'a do, Croaker?" he asked, stroking the bird's neck feathers smooth.,"He was awful interested, an' asked me to show him the fenced-in well. So we took 'cross the fields an' he saw it. He went all around the walls an' even climbed up one side of 'em, an' looked over. When he came down he said: 'Jest as I thought, Billy. That explosion you spoke of was a charge of nitro glycerine.' We struck back fer the road an' I guess he was thinkin' hard, 'cause he didn't talk any more. Then, as we was climbin' the fence to the road he asks: 'What kind of a chap is this man, Hinter, Billy?",The hearty old gentleman sighed, and his eyes reposed in thought upon the face of Lucy.,"I shall not be able to pay you anything this side my first command of the Minorca. If I hand you the sum of twenty-five guineas after my return, that is, when I am paid off[Pg 135] by Captain Acton, I believe you will not have much reason to complain, sir.",Billy was anything but easy in his mind during these exciting days. Who were the two strangers who had searched old Harry's hut? Were they the same two he and Maurice had seen in the woods on the night of the storm? If so, why did they send a message to Hinter, and what was its significance? Where was Gibson's Grove, anyway? These questions bothered him, and pondering upon them robbed him of appetite and sleep. Maurice and Elgin were no help to him in a dilemma of this kind and the new boy, Jim Scroggie, he knew scarcely well enough to trust.,At half-past eleven a carriage and pair drove through the gates and stopped in front of the house, and there fell from the box a groom in a livery of brass buttons and orange facings, who posted himself opposite the hall door and with crooked knee studied the entrance with trained intentness. He was not kept waiting long. The hall door was[Pg 85] opened, and Mr Bates, the butler, appeared with a shawl and rug and the pug. A few minutes later Miss Acton and Lucy entered the carriage, one nursing her pug, the other her terrier. And when some parcels were put in they were driven away..