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As I am rising there is a racket in the cellar and the child soon comes blinking into the lighted dining-room, his hair dusty with snow, his cheeks blazing, his eyes afire. He slips into his place with just a hint of apology about him and reaches for his cup of fresh, warm milk. He is twelve years old. "What does this mean, Mansie?" she says. "Nothing." "You are late for dinner.

Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a shifting eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil Branch, stolid and short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur on his racing bay; Black Gandil, with his villainies from the South Seas like an invisible mantle of awe about him; and her father, the stalwart, gray Boone.

I borrowed from my capital before I went, and so was able to take with me a choice collection of the most modern philosophical instruments and books, together with chemicals and such other things as I might need in my retirement. The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting mostly of sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the coast of Mansie Bay, in Caithness.

"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin' the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns." "Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?" "That can wait." "It's a bigger job than this one?" "Lots bigger." "And in the meantime?" "I'm your man." They shook hands.

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?

And the onward view of such people in such circumstances is generally a very vague one. It is only now and then that there comes the startling clearness of prospect so well set forth by Mansie Wauch. Yet sometimes, when such a vivid view comes, it remains for days and is a painful companion of your solilude.

And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it hard and fast through the door with me after 'em. They scattered, but I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached the mountain-desert and you, Jim." "Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one that 'll cap it. It was "

Her foremast snapped short off, and the men who clung to the shrouds were brushed away like a swarm of flies. With a rending, riving sound the ship began to split in two, where the sharp back of the Mansie reef was sawing into her keel. The solitary man upon the forecastle ran rapidly across the deck and seized hold of a white bundle which I had already observed but failed to make out.

In the largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan Gandil. At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces.

"There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a sledge-hammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd, well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out." Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."