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Tangled ferns dressed in autumn's russet hue lay at the base of the green-gray cliff, and circled a dark, deep pool dotted with yellow leaves. Half-way up, the perpendicular ascent was broken by a protruding ledge upon which waved broad-leaved plants and rusty ferns. Above, the cliff sheered out with many cracks and seams in its weather-beaten front. The forest grew to the verge of the precipice.

The next night, however, that faithful guardian applied the toe of his boot to the front door with such energy that the colonel leaped from bed, and protruding his head from the window said, "I wish to gracious you'd stop kicking up this kind of fuss around here every night! What do you mean, anyhow?"

The sun was pouring down upon the group of children in the clearing in front of the lop-sided cabin, and upon the empty settle up against it; upon the brooding heights that spanned the horizon beyond the Gulch, upon the fragrant pine-trees close at hand. Simon Jr. had just strayed along with a blossoming yucca protruding from his mouth, and the professor had driven him farther up the slope.

He caught it, and the eyes and tongue of the cruel monster were protruding from his head before the enraged Frenchman could be torn away by four powerful janissaries. As it was, they had to bind him hand and foot ere they were able to carry him off to torture, and probably to death. At the same time the poor, helpless form of Henri was borne from the place by two of his fellow-slaves.

Their huge, membranous wings were closed by folding their fore-arms, so that they sat like gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with their ferocious heads protruding above them. Large and small, not less than a thousand of these filthy creatures lay in the hollow before us.

It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan. When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.

During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from his shoulders.

The lads ran down to the edge of the fen, and made their way to the end of a long, open, river-like stretch of water, which was now perfectly clear, so that everything could be clearly distinguished at the bottom; and before long, as they walked to and fro, they caught sight of a little shoal of small fish, and soon after of a young pike, with his protruding lower jaw, waiting for his opportunity to make a dash at some unfortunate rudd, whose orange fins and faintly-gilded sides made him a delectable-looking morsel for his olive-green and gold excellency the tyrant of the river.

He wore pince-nez and with his long pear-shaped head, shaven to the skin, his white cheeks, protruding chin and long heavy white hands he resembled nothing so much as a large fish hanging on a nail at a fishmonger's. He worked always in a kind of cold desperate despair, his pince-nez slipping off his shiny nose, his mouth set grimly.

Accustomed as I am to ridiculous things happening to me, still I never felt in so absurd a position as when, having mounted "Helen," who seemed in a particularly playful mood after a good feed of oats, Kitty was handed to me neatly tied up in a pillow-case with her tufted head protruding from a hole in the seam at the side.