United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One by one they rode up, and whistled to announce their coming, and then rode on to the stable to unsaddle their horses. About the supper table all gathered with the exception of Bud Mansie. So they waited the meal and each from time to time stole a glance at the fifth plate where Bud should sit.
Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the ceremony all save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment before and then silently left the room. A bottle of whiskey was produced and glasses filled all round. Jim Boone brought in the seventh chair and placed it at the table. They raised their glasses. "To the empty chair," said Boone.
Do not vex yourself by fancying that you will never have heart to send off the old carriage, nor by wondering where you shall find the money to buy a new one. Have you ever read the "Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith," by that pleasing poet and most amiable man, the late David Macbeth Moir?
Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's Patterson?" "Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk someplace?" "Patterson doesn't get drunk not that way. And he knows that we were to start again today." "There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch. "It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.
He made another desperate effort, and twisting himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped: "McGurk God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched the blanket. It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.
Mansie Wauch's glimpse of destitution was bad enough; but a million times worse is a glimpse of hardened and unabashed sin and shame. And it would be no comfort it would be an aggravation in that view to think that by the time you have reached that miserable point, you will have grown pretty well reconciled to it. That is the worst of all.
When, being the youngest of the family, I had said grace and we were supping our brose, Uncle Mansie looked over to me and asked: "Well, Hal, are you coming out in the Curlew with us to see the whaling ships away?" I replied in true Orkney fashion by asking another question: "How far are you to take them?" Mansie turned to father, who said: "Och, we'll take them as far as the Braga Rock anyway.
"I've lived too long with the name of McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth, but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em.
I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so I went out and nabbed her." "Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?" Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her sides and her small brown fists clenched. "Hal he died, and there was nothing but talk about him nothing done. You got a live man in Hal's place." She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.
Word Of The Day