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Stake game Asia Pinnacle Online Casino", CHAPTER XIII LUCY'S MADNESS,"To prospect; to look for a new field. I figured that the Pennsylvania vein would come out about here and extend northward.",Mr Lawrence's face lighted up, but the expression was curious; it was composite; it seemed to be lacking in the elementary quality[Pg 58] of exultation or rejoicing which naturally would have been sought for or expected.,The voice of Lucy within cried out: "Is anybody there?",Billy had to stifle his emotion and swallow twice before he answered: "That's what I'd like you to call me. I'll bet you can't say it, though."，"Well now, I can't see why a dozen wouldn't keep as well as three," returned the keeper, as he pulled the punt high on shore.，"It gives me great pleasure to serve my old friend," said Captain Acton. "Mr Lawrence is an officer with a career full of gallant things; I have no doubt he is a[Pg 24] capable navigator. Will you ask him to call upon me this evening?"，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.Billy was running up the aisle.

"I aim to call her Lou," he said hesitatingly. "That is if you don't mind.",He endeavoured to recollect himself that, by calming his terrors his memory might better serve him. Urgent alarms often induce vain hopes which we should laugh at in the cool mood. He believed he might have put that letter down in his bedroom, and perfectly well knowing that he had not done so, and yet coaxed by a will-o'-the-wisp hope, he ransacked the room as though he knew that in it was to be found a gold piece of value whose discovery demanded a careful search only. What was certain in his mind was that that letter was in his pocket when he walked that morning to visit the Minorca. He remembered withdrawing it from his pocket, but in what part of the walk he knew not, and re-perusing a portion of it to refresh his memory. He tried to find comfort in the recollection that the letter bore no address and no signature. But a thundercloud of horror came down on this feeble streak of sunshine when he recalled the damning, incriminating contents of that sheet[Pg 152] which he had scrawled in pencil at "The Swan Inn." Whoever found it would know that Mr Lawrence, and Mr Lawrence alone, had written it, and this, too, irrespective of the handwriting.,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.,CHAPTER XIII LUCY'S MADNESS,So hummed old Harry as he stirred the potatoes and wet his vocal chords, occasionally, from the jug at his feet.,"Glory be! It's find ye alone I do," he spoke in rich Irish brogue. "It's trill ye a chune I did from the copse, yonder, so's to soften the hard heart of ye, Caleb. It's dhry I am as a last-year's chip, an' me little jug do be pinin' fer a refillin'.",Something like a muffled chuckle came from behind the stairway door, but the good woman, intent on her grievance, did not hear it. Wilson heard, however, and let the boot-jack fall to the floor with a clatter. He picked it up and carried it over to its accustomed peg on the wall, whistling softly the tune which he had whistled to Billy in the old romping, astride-neck days:,"Watch out!" warned Billy, grasping him by the arm and jerking him to one side, "that struck elm is goin' to fall." A rainbow of flame flashed close before the boys, as the stricken tree crashed across the path, hurling forth a shower of sparks as it came to earth. Then inky darkness followed and from the black canopy which a moment ago had seemed to touch the tree tops the rain fell in torrents.,Billy shifted uneasily in his seat. He was sorry now that he had not paid closer attention to the reading of the lesson.,"Not yourn? Then whose is it?" she cried in amazement.,The decks were empty, the men were at dinner. She was a flush deck ship, that is to say, her decks ran fore-and-aft without a break. She was steered by a wheel placed aft, which was unusual. Her deck furniture was simple: she had the necessary companion-way to the cabin, a little caboose or kitchen abaft the foremast, and abaft that again a long boat secured keel up to ring bolts by lashings. She also carried a couple of boats secured under the bulwarks. Her artillery was trifling: four eighteen-pounder carronades, two of a side, the purpose of which it was idle to enquire, because, as she carried but twelve seamen, two boys, a steward, and a cook, she was not likely to make much show of resistance against a pirate with the blood-red flag of "No Quarter" at his mast-head, or any ship[Pg 96] of the enemy which, though but a lugger, would certainly be far more heavily armed and manned than the Minorca.,He held the newly captured snake along his arm, its head resting in the palm of his hand. The dim light was sufficiently strong for Maurice to note the cold gleam in its eyes, and he shuddered. "Some day you'll try your monkey-shines on a puff-adder er a black-snake," he prophesied, "an' then you'll wish you hadn't gone clean crazy.".