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Quickly Kennedy outlined, with Donnelly's permission, the story we had just heard. The two store detectives saw the humour of the situation, as well as the seriousness of it, and fell to comparing notes. "The professional as well as the amateur shop-lifter has always presented to me an interesting phase of criminality," remarked Kennedy tentatively, during a lull in their mutual commiseration.

Phipps, whose cheerful appearance in company gave rise to some ingenious prophetic remarks. The village folks pronounced the newly-wedded pair to be the handsomest they had seen married at Beechhurst church for many a long year, and perhaps it was lucky that Lady Latimer stayed away, for there was nothing in Mr. Harry Musgrave's air or countenance to cheat her into commiseration.

Here and there we encountered an Indian, of whom Pedro made inquiries; but from no one could we obtain information to guide us. We were passing over a somewhat level country, when Pedro pointed to a line of blackened walls and charred timbers in the distance. "Yonder is the place you seek, Senor," he said, in a tone of commiseration which touched my heart.

Sharpitlaw took a chair, and, commanding the turnkey to retire, he opened the conversation, endeavouring to throw into his tone and countenance as much commiseration as they were capable of expressing, for the one was sharp and harsh, the other sly, acute, and selfish. "How's a' wi' ye, Effie? How d'ye find yoursell, hinny?" A deep sigh was the only answer.

They hurried forward and dived below. The first person they met was Pierre, who looked with commiseration on their tarred dresses. "I came on board with a nice clean suit, and had to spoil it just as you have had to spoil yours," he observed; "and now he abuses me when I go into his cabin, for not looking clean."

I thought, with some commiseration for him, that at bottom her manner showed some real leaning towards the lover she had discarded that she felt the need of a pincushion, as it were, into which to stick the little points of her malevolence. I think I was inclined to be hard on her. I have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that was unattainable by me.

"Tired, Joseph, dear?" murmured his mother, regarding him with a mixture of pride and commiseration. "Oh, I'm worn out, that's what I am," he said, as he sank into a chair and regarded the certainly untempting food with an eye of disfavour. "Been hard at it all the evening" he spoke with a Cockney, city accent, and was rather uncertain about his aspirates "I work like a nigger."

I felt real commiseration for these middle- class, evidently hard-working people, as the gold plate was presented again and again, first, I presume, for the Church; secondly, for the poor; thirdly, for Heaven knows what. Then two of the bridesmaids, each taking the arm of a white-gloved, swallow-tailed cavalier, made the round of the wedding guests, begging money of them.

He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!

The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and what they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be tried before court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the American consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be carried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with the agitations of his mind, and the results of a marsh fever contracted in the lines of Mataafa, reached Honolulu a very proper object of commiseration.