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Maria roamed about the room, McTeague following her in his huge stockinged feet. All at once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand instruments in a coverless cigar-box, pluggers, hard bits, and excavators. Maria had long coveted such a find in McTeague's "Parlor," knowing it should be somewhere about. The instruments were of the finest tempered steel and really valuable.

No one seemed to have suspected the furze a mile away, and still less the marsh and the coverless bleak shore of the estuary, as his home. Indeed, no one looks for a cat on a wind-whipped marsh when woods are near at all. Yet this open, wet country seemed to be a peculiarly favorite hunting-ground of Pharaoh's.

Although among the commonest of the species, the grey sand crab, which burrows bolt-holes in the beaches, is by no means an uninteresting character. Surrounded by enemies, and yet living on the bare, coverless beach, its faculties for self-preservation are exceptionally refined. The eyes are elongated ovals, based on singularly mobile pivots, while the pupils resemble the bubble of a spirit-level.

All complete sets contain one hundred and seven pieces, and include one dozen each of dinner, breakfast, tea, soup, and butter plates, and cups and saucers of medium size, three platters of various sizes, vegetable dishes, covered and coverless, and a gravy boat. Tureen, sugar bowl, and cream pitcher, and after-dinner coffees are not included, but may be ordered extra.

He then brought a prized, battered, and coverless volume from a hidden recess in the rafters, and lying down with the buffalo robe over him, and his cap in his hand ready to extinguish the light at the first footstep of a trespasser, gave himself up as he had given himself up, I fear, many other times to the enchantment of the page before him.

Which is the real possessor of a book the man who has its original and every following edition, and shows, to many an admiring and envying visitor, now this, now that, in binding characteristic, with possessor-pride; yea, from secret shrine is able to draw forth and display the author's manuscript, with the very shapes in which his thoughts came forth to the light of day, or the man who cherishes one little, hollow-backed, coverless, untitled, bethumbed copy, which he takes with him in his solitary walks and broods over in his silent chamber, always finding in it some beauty or excellence or aid he had not found before which is to him in truth as a live companion?

During his threescore-and-five years he has moved almost across a continent, never content unless he was on the frontier. Long may he live to ride in his light coverless wagon in the smile of bright Colorado sunshine, honored by all who know him, and affording his friends the enjoyment of his rare good presence!

I surveyed them both critically, but the one nearest to me having the netting arranged for entrance, I selected it, and setting the lamp upon the dresser, extinguished it, groped to the bed in darkness, and lay down upon the coverless sheet.

On the right-hand long wall, a little beyond the angle of this corner, a few boards, tacked together in any fashion to make a two-sided screen four feet in height, marked the position of a cabinet d'aisance, composed of a small coverless tin pail identical with the other six, and a board of the usual design which could be placed on the pail or not as desired.

And between very honest, tired, and lonely tears she began slowly to spell out the words of the coverless book, having gained within the past few hours some understanding of what it means in the battle of life to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.