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Ballygran appeared at last, dimly visible through the driving rain. It was a miserable-looking hovel, roofed with sodden thatch, surrounded by a sea of mud. A bare-footed woman stood in the doorway. She wore a tattered skirt and a bodice fastened across her breast with a brass safety-pin.
"You may see him any day standing at the street corners, begging, a miserable-looking object, exciting the pity of the humane, and gathering in money to spend in drunken debauchery at night. He has been known to bring in some days as high as ten and some fifteen dollars, all of which is wasted in riot before the next morning.
He left the parcel therefore with the carrier's wife, and proceeded, somewhat sad at heart, to spend the last of his money, amounting to half-a crown. Having done so, he set out for home, the wind blowing fierce, and the snow falling thick. Just outside the village he met a miserable-looking woman, with a child in her arms. How she came to be there he could not think.
The youngster who had been dignified with the above sobriquet, and who made these replies, was certainly a most miserable-looking object, and looked as if a top-gallant breeze would have blown him to atoms. But if his body was weak, his tongue was most powerful. He resorted to no other weapon, and used that skilfully.
My Sunday in Bela Palanka impresses me with the conviction that an Oriental village is a splendid place not to live in. In dry weather it is disagreeable enough, but to-day, it is a disorderly aggregation of miserable-looking villagers, pigs, ducks, geese, chickens, and dogs, paddling around the muddy streets.
This is good work, considering the ponies seldom exceed fourteen hands two inches, and have to carry a couple of heavy saddle-bags in addition to their rider. Gerôme must have ridden quite fourteen stone. About ten o'clock the horses arrived, in charge of a miserable-looking Shagird, in rags and a huge lamb's-wool cap, the only warm thing about him.
Weeks passed on, and still, in spite of constant persecution, Stephen remained at the mill. Scarcely any one spoke a kind word to him except Mr. Fairfax, but he very seldom saw him. Even old Mr. Munster, the head foreman, addressed him sharply and contemptuously, which was not his usual custom. The lad did his work well enough, but he was such a miserable-looking fellow, and so untidy and shabby.
I found the Mews easily. A crook-backed dwarf of a man was lounging at the corner of it smoking his pipe. Not liking his looks, I did not inquire of him where Mrs. Horlick lived, but went down the Mews till I met with a woman, and asked her. She directed me to the right number. I knocked at the door, and Mrs. Horlick herself a lean, ill-tempered, miserable-looking woman answered it.
Some fathers went even further than this, and Râja Haji Hamid once told me that he killed his first man when he was a child of eleven or twelve, his victim being a very thin, miserable-looking Chinaman, upon whom his father bade him try his 'prentice hand.
Paoli was a tall man with a slight cough, and the melancholy look of a consumptive; he showed them their room, a miserable-looking chamber built of stone, but which was handsome for this country, where no refinement is known.
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