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The dogs were muzzled by leather straps. The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at the wheel. The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky; long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.

Wearing a hat beribboned like a fairing and plumed like the head-piece of a Representative on mission, the citoyenne Rochemaure was wigged, painted, patched and scented.

"I have changed my politics, Count,* that is all, and have resolved to lose no time in proclaiming the change. But is it true that you are going to be married?" * Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, Tories on the other. "Married! Heaven forbid! which of my enemies spread so cruel a report?"

It was a brute of a tonga, a patched and ramshackle wreck of what had once been a real tonga, with no top to protect the travellers from the sun, and accommodation only for three, including the driver. The Eurasian ticket-agent alighted and solicited rupees. He got them and with them Amber's unvarnished opinion of the tonga; something which was not received with civility by the driver.

Now they saw desert for the first time the curious iron-grey, velvety-brown, and rose-pink mountains; the nomadic Arabs camping in their earth-coloured tents patched with rags; the camels against the skyline; the everlasting sands, broken here and there by the deep green shadows of distant oases, where the close-growing palms, seen from far off, give to the desert almost the effect that clouds give to Cornish waters.

They saw a coast-line of weather-beaten crags set thick with spruce and fir, the surf-washed cliffs of Great Head and Schooner Head, the rocky front of Newport Mountain, patched with ragged woods, the arid domes of Dry Mountain and Green Mountain, the round bristly backs of the Porcupine Islands, and the waving outline of the Gouldsborough Hills.

For herself were reserved the old patched garments too bad for anyone else. The last place in the choir and refectory was the one which she selected. She could not bear to be addressed as the Foundress, saying that she was a worthless creature who did nothing but offend God. Never was she heard to speak of herself, except to depreciate her own merit.

When the matter was quite settled at Loring, when Miss Marrable not only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being again patched up, she bethought herself of her promise to Mr. Gilmore.

The sash was sadly patched and broken; a torn piece of paper hung halfway down across it. Gretel's face was pressed to the window. "Can you see anything?" whispered Hilda at last. "Yes the father lies very still, his head is bandaged, and all their eyes are fastened upon him.

Meanwhile, the breeze which had sprung up so opportunely to take the brig out of our immediate neighbourhood not only lasted, but continued to freshen steadily, with the result that by the time that we had patched each other up, and were ready to undertake the mournful task of burying our slain, the wicked but beautiful craft that had inflicted such grievous injury and loss upon us had slid away over the ocean's rim, and was hull-down.