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highest wicket taker one of the leading bookmakers in Asia, is always the top choice for smart bettors.⭐️ They resumed their walk. When they had reached the bridge they found old Mr Greyquill, leaning over the rail, and gazing with intentness, with a sort of lifting leer which could not be defined as a smile, though it was like the shadow of one, in the direction of Old Harbour. This person was not used to address either of the gentlemen on meeting them in the public streets. They were accustomed to nod in silence. But this morning [Pg 175]as the Admiral and the Captain passed him, the Admiral so close as to brush his coat-tail, the old scrivener turned with a rapid motion and exclaimed, still preserving his singular leer: "I beg pardon, gentlemen, but as I fail to see the Minorca amongst the ships, may I enquire if she has sailed?",Beneath the shadow of the coming storm the forest gloom deepened to velvet blackness. Suddenly a tongue of lightning licked the tree-tops and a crash of thunder shattered the stillness. A few heavy rain-drops spattered on the branches above the heads of the waiting three. Billy and Maurice, a strange terror tugging at their heart-strings, waited for old Harry to give the word forward. But Harry seemed to be in no great hurry to voice such command. Fear had gripped his superstitious soul and the courage loaned him from the squat demijohn was fast oozing away.,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.,"I agree with you, Acton: a fleet of men-of-war," said the Admiral.,"Good!" cried the Admiral with a laugh and an applauding flourish of the hand, and[Pg 94] with this laugh, and smiles and bows from the ladies, Sir William and his companions pursued their way to the Minorca.，He pointed through the trees to an open glade in the grove. The full moon, riding high in the sky, threw her light fair upon the fern-sown sod; across the glade a white object was moving—drifting straight toward the watchers. Billy, tightly gripping his rabbit's foot charm in one sweaty hand and a rough-barked sapling in the other, felt Walter's hands clutching his shoulders.，"And for a very good reason, by George," cried Maddoc. "How could it be found when it lay safely locked in a deposit box in my vault?"，"Ner me, either. I guess we'll have to give up the hunt fer t'night, Maurice. Anyways, we don't know jest how to work ol' Harry's fairy arrer."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?"

Another call from the mast-head, and yet another and another and another in brief[Pg 391] intervals of scarce half a minute's duration each; and at last fourteen sail were reported in sight on the starboard bow, sailing large, heading north-east or thereabouts so that the course of the Aurora would bring her into the thick of them.,"Oh yes, thoroughly—very thoroughly.",She stood up. "Well, Tom, if you and Cobin are through with the game don't start another. It's late an' time all decent folks was home abed.",In the course of a few weeks the Admiral arrived at his little cottage. He was without his son, of whom no news could be obtained. Gossip had ceased to flow when the Minorca[Pg 452] returned, and the tongues of her crew once again opened the flood-gate of talk. But what could they declare that should convict Mr Lawrence of piracy? They said that the Minorca had sailed under secret instructions from Captain Acton which, Mr Lawrence had gathered, imported the sale of the barque at a place named. These instructions were never read to the crew, because she was overhauled by the frigate and the Aurora before the defined parallels of latitude and longitude had been reached. Captain Acton never denied that he had given secret instructions to Mr Lawrence. There was therefore no case against the Admiral's son. And from the statements made by the crew, confirmed by Mr Eagle and Mr Pledge, it was generally held by the honest gossips of Old Harbour Town that between you and them and the bedpost, Miss Lucy Acton had eloped with Mr Lawrence, had so acted as to persuade the crew that she had been abducted, and had been recaptured by her father, whose sole motive in pursuing the barque was to regain his child.,"I never tasted a finer flavoured piece of mutton. This jelly, too, lifts it to the dignity of a haunch. Those spring cabbages are very tender. We do not eat nearly enough vegetables in this country. What purifies the[Pg 149] blood like a well-cooked spring cabbage that melts in the mouth? I am in hopes that we shall get a very good show of potatoes. Are you fresh from the ship?","No, ours won't be them kind of colds," Billy explained. "They'll be the dry-cough, consumption kind, that either cure up quick er slow. All we gotta do is dig up an Injun turnip out o' the bush an' nibble it. It'll pucker our throats up so tight we'll be hoarse enough to sing bass in the choir.",She looked at Sir William, and with that look her face underwent a change—the change that had amazed Mr Lawrence, that transformation of beauty into alternate idiocy and bright-eyed madness, that marvellous facial motion which had done more to convince her kidnapper that his act had driven her mad than all the rest of her impersonations put together. Her rich and beautiful eyelids seemed to shrink up into the sockets in which her eyes were lodged; the eyes themselves seemed to sparkle with the uninterpretable passions of the afflicted[Pg 379] brain; the faint bloom which her cheek wore when she stepped on board faded as the picture of a red rose overhanging its reflection in water disappears at the blurring by the wind of its liquid mirror. Her lips were elongated and parted, and grey with tension, and her teeth, white as sea foam, were set. The whole expression of madness was incomparably life-like.,Mrs. Keeler lifted the basket which Maurice had placed on the floor at his feet. "What's the matter with you?" she asked, giving him a shake.,He had been told what had happened, and presented himself equipped with wool, lint, and bandages. He speedily discovered that the pistol had been discharged at the place where Mr Lawrence supposed his heart to beat. The unfortunate man imagined that the heart is on the left side of the body, whereas it is nearly in the middle, and is well protected by the breast-bone and ribs, so well indeed that only a small portion is unprotected. The bullet[Pg 441] had passed clean through the chest and left lung, and come out just below the left blade-bone of the shoulder. The surgeon, on removing Mr Lawrence's shirt and vest, found the bullet, which had not pierced the vest. The wounds of entrance and of exit were easily seen, and the former was bleeding freely.,Billy looked searchingly at his new friend. "I never told a soul how I did it, 'cept my chum, Maurice Keeler," he said. "But I'll tell you. That same evenin' I was prowlin' through the slashin' lookin' fer white grubs fer bass-bait. I found a big rotten stump, so I pushed it over, an' right down under the roots I found an old weasel an' six half-grown kittens. Afore she could get over her surprise, I had her an' her family in the tin pail I had with me, an' the cover on. By rights I should'a killed the whole caboodle of 'em, I s'pose, 'cause they're mighty hard on the birds; but I had work fer 'em to do.,"And we can land him privately," continued the Admiral, "at an English port, where habited in the clothes of a common sailor he will seek a berth before the mast, and sail away—to be heard of no more.",Billy, who had anticipated what was coming, gave a well-feigned start..