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There were faces of every form, if not of colour, for all were black as jet; their faces disfigured in every variety of manner, some with lip-rings, others with rings in their noses, and some with pieces of bone stuck spritsail fashion through the cartilage. Some, instead of bone, wore brass-headed nails, while many had pieces of bone through their ears.
I paused for a moment beside an old-fashioned walnut table which stood close by the bed's head. Its top had been covered at some remote period with artificial leather, which was held around the edges by a strip or braid of similar material, the whole made secure by ornamental brass-headed tacks placed at intervals of two or three inches.
He closed his eyes to shut out the blinding snow for a moment, and then Tom sat up and rubbed them, for there was no snow, no avalanche, no Alp, no St. Bernard dog in sight. Only a friendly pair of andirons staring fixedly at him out of the fireplace of his father's library: the poker standing like a grenadier at one side, and the bellows, hanging from a brass-headed nail on the other.
Pargeter fumbled at the brass-headed pin; he pulled it out, and a drawer which filled up the side of the davenport shot out. Yes, here were more packets inscribed with the words, "Jasper's letters, written at school," and then others, "To be returned to Laurence Vanderlyn in case of my death;" and two or three loose letters. "Well, these won't tell us anything, eh, Grid?"
Cecil Barker pointed to a box of brass-headed nails upon the mantelpiece. "Mr. Douglas was altering the pictures yesterday," he said. "I saw him myself, standing upon that chair and fixing the big picture above it. That accounts for the hammer." "We'd best put it back on the rug where we found it," said the sergeant, scratching his puzzled head in his perplexity.
Peter woke up, rubbing his eyes, for he had been dreaming that he saw the chair again with its beautiful red padding standing whole and uninjured before the grandfather's door, and indeed just as he awoke he thought he was looking at the brass-headed nails that studded it all round, but it was only the bright yellow flowers beside him.
This big room was divided in the center by a curtain made of gunny-sack stuff, and this curtain was covered with pictures such as were never seen on land or sea. The walls were papered with brown wrapping-paper, tacked up with brass-headed nails, and this paper was covered with pictures such as were never seen on sea or land.
Still, as this was, for many a day to come, to be the only furnished room in my house, it was worth a little planning to get it set out to the best advantage. My red drugget I laid out in the centre, and fastened it down with brass-headed nails. It looked much smaller than I had hoped, a little red island on an ocean of deal board, or a postage stamp in the middle of an envelope.
It was understood by all who had yet entered the sacred precincts of the room to be the symbol of what made the difference between them and "the angel," and they looked at it with awe, and mentally crossed themselves in its presence. At the windows were two lengths of snowy cheese-cloth crudely hemmed by Michael, and tacked up in pleats with brass-headed tacks.
I snatched up the brass-headed poker, the readiest thing to my hand. I merely wished to shoo off the Blacks with it. But as I rose from my chair with a scat! upon my lips, Beautiful Dog, seeing out of the tail of his eye a chance to escape, dashed headlong into me.
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