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The night was as quiet as it was dark, for the wind, light all through the preceding twenty hours, had at length fallen away to nothing, and the ship was motionless, save for the slight heave of the swell which, stealing along through the blackness, would occasionally take her under the counter and give her a gentle lift that would cause all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it.
If he allowed one of those wolves to approach nigh enough to leap upon him, he would be borne to the earth like a flash and share the fate of the victim of his pistol. They were near, for he could hear that multitudinous pattering on the ice, when the din of their cries permitted it, and they were running fast.
“But, Granny,” Maida protested passionately, “I don’t want to please the grown people, I want to please the children. And papa said I must make the store pay. And now I’m afraid I never will. Oh, what shall I do?” She got no further. A tinkle of the bell, followed by pattering footsteps, interrupted.
It was a cold, dismal morning, and sobbing wintry winds and the ceaseless pattering of rain made the outer world seem dreary in comparison with the genial atmosphere and the ruddy glow of the cosy, luxurious library, where choice exotics breathed their fragrance and early hyacinths exhaled their rich perfume.
These showers were partial, and all things around so still, that we could hear the rain drops pattering among the leaves of the trees that grew on the sides of the mountains two miles from the spot where we sat rejoicing in the warmth and cheerfulness of a summer's sun. At eleven o'clock the boat returned with rifles, and powder enough to blow up the village of Auron.
The time had been when the steamboat had to content us and I feel how amply it must have done so as I recall the thrill of docking in dim early dawns, the whole hour of the Albany waterside, the night of huge strange paddling and pattering and shrieking and creaking once ended, and contrast with it all certain long sessions in the train at an age and in conditions when neither train nor traveller had suffered chastening; sessions of a high animation, as I recast them, but at the same time of mortal intensities of lassitude.
They rode on it for three or four miles, and at length, coming to a gray-green valley, they saw a huge flock of sheep. Soon the air was full of bleats and baas as well as the odor of sheep, and a low, soft roar of pattering hoofs. The flock held a compact formation, covering several acres, and grazed along rapidly. There were three herders on horses and several pack-burros.
Virginia would have been meant for it, too, and, by now, there would have been children in the old house, pattering back and forth upon the stairs, lisping words that meant no more than the bubbling of a fountain, and stretching up tiny hands that looked like crumpled rose-petals, pleading to be taken up and loved.
There were half a dozen of them pattering along in line between their vacant swinging palanquins, and they had evidently learned that, being a 'part of the show, they might claim and keep the right of way.
The assault almost lifted him off his feet, and hatless as he was he set off, running as a man runs whose life depends upon his speed. The sound of his pattering footsteps was echoed from wall to wall of the cul-de-sac until finally it was swallowed up in the fog.
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