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There was a chance, which could be determined by trying, and only by trying; and there were certain probabilities in favour of success. The first difficulty that relating to the strength and weight of the rope admitted of rational discussion and calculation. There were data to go upon, and others that might be decided conjecturally, yet sufficiently near the truth for all preliminary purposes.
"You can save up the alterations for yourself, to be commenced when you come into the property. A nice bonne bouche of outlay for you to contemplate." "I don't look to come into it," replied Lionel. "The probabilities are that you will come into it," returned John Massingbird, more seriously than he often spoke.
In the perplexity of mind in which I found myself, I felt a want of something more certain than mere probabilities to base my decision upon. I put on my mask, and repaired to the mansion of the French ambassador.
Even the watches of the leading officers had been regulated, that there might not be the smallest error with regard to time. It is a painful reflection that this carefulness of preparation, and prescience with respect to probabilities, was not shown by the English general and his associates in arranging the mode of attack.
They would scarce suspect the existence of a canoe in such an out-of-the-way spot, where the water a mere stagnant pond had no communication either with the river or the adjacent bayous. With such probabilities I was cheering myself and my companion, as we kept rapidly along our course!
As Waverley moved on, here and there an old man, bent as much by toil as years, his eyes bleared with age and smoke, tottered to the door of his hut, to gaze on the dress of the stranger and the form and motions of the horses, and then assembled, with his neighbours, in a little group at the smithy, to discuss the probabilities of whence the stranger came and where he might be going.
And if it is not allowable to consider all these men as Gods, then, certainly, probabilities are not in favor of our acknowledging the Divinity of those previously mentioned beings from whom these have proceeded.
Even the woman, who arrogated a spirit of prophecy and had long practised the devices of a fortune-teller, thus accustomed to scan the possibilities and in some degree versed in the adjustment of the probabilities, accorded the homely verisimilitude of their worldly-wise representations the meed of a simple and respectful credulity.
But even this is likely to be a "whopper," for a more reliable private letter from Artemus declares his fixed purpose to leave for England in the steamship City of Boston early in June; and the probabilities are that he will be stepping on English shores just about the time that these pages go to press.
But, as soon as Mannette had finished what she was about, he put her out of the room, and double locked the door. He busied himself in forming a new line of battle, and in deciding upon prompt and active measures. He rapidly examined the situation. Had he been deceived in his investigations? No. Were his calculations of probabilities erroneous? No. He had started with a positive fact, the murder.
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