Cash'n Fruits 243

Cash'n Fruits 243 Over the stone wall they went, down the slope and through the meadow, Patricia nodded. "You'll be in better shape to begin on the library design next week," she said briskly. "I'm not going to start my study till I feel just like it. Doesn't pay to push yourself too hard. We've had a glorious week, with the concerts and theater and the museums and all, and I've learned more than I should have at the school. Just living teaches you lots, if you'll learn, and I don't believe in turning up my nose at things just because they aren't in a roster.","Pooh, I shan't mind how criss-cross he is," declared Patricia valiantly. "I'm only the rankest greenhorn, anyway. He can't expect me to be a Rodin.",All the long morning and far into the afternoon, Talking Rock swept the dust this way and that, turning it over and over, in a circle that grew always wider, and just as he was about to give up the search, he found a bit of charred and blackened bone. Was this a part of his friend's frame? Was it not more likely a bit of bone of buffalo or elk, which some dog had carried from one of the fireplaces of the camp and dropped here?,"I don't think I understand you," she says, at length, gravely. "Where would the rest of her be, if she wasn't all in the same place?",“Here, you poor darling, take mine! And don’t be afraid—you’ll find your mother before long.” Edith’s words were brave, but her own eyes were moist.，"How did it happen?" she asks, presently.，It had been arranged between Captain Acton and Admiral Lawrence that the latter should breakfast at half-past nine with Captain[Pg 163] Acton, who would then fill an hour with transaction of certain business which he could deal with in his own house, leaving the Admiral to amuse himself in the grounds with his pipe, and, if he chose, a telescope; after which they would walk leisurely down to Old Harbour, go on board the Minorca, and take a farewell view of the vessel with a God-speed to her new commander.，CHAPTER XVI BILLY MEETS A DIVINITYCaptain Weaver was carrying out the instructions he had received at Old Harbour Town. He was chasing the Minorca. The recovery of Lucy had led to no change in those instructions. Though Captain Acton in his gratitude for the restoration of his child was willing to relinquish the pursuit and to leave the Minorca and the handsome piratical scoundrel who had sailed away with her and Lucy to their fate, he had not revealed his thoughts to Captain Weaver, nor to the Admiral, and the Aurora at this hour of daybreak on a day in June 1805, was steadily stemming in chase of the barque which she was to capture, Captain Weaver did not exactly know how. For the Aurora was unarmed, whilst the Minorca mounted four pieces of artillery, and was in command of a naturally desperate fighting and fearless spirit, one whose neck would certainly be broken by the hangman if he was taken: unless indeed his crew turned upon him, and backed their yards and stopped the ship, that her owner might come by his own, despite Mr Lawrence's levelled[Pg 390] pistol or any threats he might make use of in reference to the powder magazine. "But," Captain Weaver had thought to himself on several occasions, "time enough to know what's a-going to happen when we heave the Minorca into view or draw abreast of her, for who's to tell but that we are bound to miss her, in which case we shall receive her at Rio, providing her skipper hasn't got scent of us and shifted his hellum for another port, and then there can be no blazing away of carronades on one side and a trimming of sail to keep clear of shot on the other."

Now the unrest and uncertainty which had overshadowed Scotia for months had been miraculously lifted and in its place was rest and certainty. Sorrow and pity for the man who had been stricken with blindness gave place to joy and congratulation. Swifter-winged than the harbinger of sorrow, which sometimes falters in its flight as though loath to cause a jarring note deep within God's harmony, flashed the joyful news that Frank Stanhope had come into his inheritance and would see again. For a week following the wonderful news the people of the Settlement did little else than discuss it together. Man, woman and child they came to the vine-covered cottage to tell Stanhope they were glad.,and light breaks through shutter and curtain, and objects pale and ghostly at first soon grow large and intimate.,Patricia sorted them over rapidly before Elinor had reached the table.,“You are right, Bob. I am the chief and starting from to-day I will have to be Mr. Whitney. There is another rodman here and it would be bad for discipline if you called me by that—‘vacation’ name, let’s call it. But we had mighty good times when I was just Whiskers, didn’t we?”,"Oh, I have my work to do; and besides, I often prefer standing.",Anson sat up suddenly.,As Mona comes still nearer, the words of the speaker reach her, and sink into her brain. It is Lady Rodney who is holding forth, and what she says floats lightly to Mona's ears. She is still advancing, unmindful of anything but the fact that she cannot see Geoffrey again for more hours than she cares to count, when the following words become clear to her, and drive the color from her cheeks,—,Jean hid a queer little smile that she could not repress.,The first down rush was glorious. Not until he started to climb up the other incline of the cable did Bob give any thought to the speed he was making. There was a slight slackening in the rush through the air, but so quickly was the whole journey over that Bob’s first impression was the one that he slipped off the bucket with when it touched ground at the foot of the west tower.,This was proof conclusive that Miss Acton had not.,The duchess is amused.,When they drew near to the camp the woman went on ahead and sat down on a butte. Then some curious persons came out to see who this might be. As they approached the woman called out to them, "Do not come any nearer. Go and tell my mother and my relations to put up a lodge for us a little way from the camp, and near by it build a sweat-house." When this had been done the man and his wife went in and took a thorough sweat, and then they went into the lodge and burned sweet grass and purified their clothing and the Worm Pipe. Then their relations and friends came in to see them. The man told them where he had been and how he had managed to get his wife back, and that the pipe hanging over the doorway was a medicine pipe—the Worm Pipe—presented to him by his ghost father-in-law..