Black Bull

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"Gollies!" exclaimed Maurice. "It's your rabbit foot charm. Where d'you find it, Bill?",

The other man turned on him angrily. "Who'll find it?" he retorted. "Don't be a fool, Jack. You couldn't pull anybody to that place with a loggin' chain. It's the safest spot in the world to hide the stuff, I tell ye. Besides, the boat orter be in in a few days, and we kin slip the stuff to Cap. Jacques without the boss ever knowin' how far we've exceeded his orders.",

Now, for the swamp-coon, Croaker had all the jealousy and hatred a crow is capable of feeling and as a last resort, whenever he was obdurate and disobedient as he was now, his master could nearly always bring him to submission by the mere mention of Ringdo's name. At Billy's threat Croaker raised his head and poured forth such a jargon of heart-broken lamentation that the listening owls inside crouched low in terror, their amber eyes questioning the meaning of the awful sound.,

Her wild look, the extraordinary change by dramatisation of the eyes which she held in their soft brilliance fastened upon him, her raised, painful, indescribable voice, her attitude, the hue of her face, might well have suggested to him that her threat was no idle one, that being a young woman of exquisite[Pg 253] sensibility she might be so wrought by his inhuman conduct as to lose her mind, her delicate intellect would stagger into madness under the cruel blow he had dealt her in the name of love.

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"Well, I don't say that they are. That job was not done by any amateurs, though. The men who broke into Spencer's store were old hands at the game. I was at the store and had a look over it. I've seen the work of professional burglars before. These fellows made a clean sweep and left not a single clew. Still, I made my own deductions. I can't tell you more until I have proved my suspicions correct. Hush!" he warned, "she's coming. I must be hitting the trail for the Settlement.",

"Did it, Billy, did it? And is my face turned towards it now, Billy?",

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.,

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.