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I sat plaiting a leash for my hounds on the settle before the fire in our great hall at Bures, and I remember how the strands of leather thong fell in my hand; I remember how my mother's spinning wheel stopped short with a snapping of broken threads; how the thrall who was feeding the fire stayed with the log in his hands; how the sleepy men at the lower end of the hall sprang up with heavy words checked on their lips before the lady's presence; how the maidens screamed aye, and how the draught swayed the wall hangings, and sent a long train of sparks flying from a half-dead torch, as the great door was thrown open and a man flung himself into our midst, mud splashed and white faced, with hands that quivered towards us as he cried hoarsely: "In haste, mistress you must fly the Danes " and fell like a log at my mother's feet where she sat on the dais, neither moving nor speaking more.
She seated herself where she had sat more than half the day, and he took the chair to which she had pointed. She poked the small green logs with the antiquated tongs and watched the sparks that flew upwards with every touch while she waited for him to speak.
So for about a quarter of an hour they talked of books their favorites hers, all so simple and chaste, his, of all kinds, so long as they showed style, and were masterpieces of taste and balance. Then, as a great piece of wood fell in the open grate and made a volley of sparks, he leaned forward a little and asked her if he might tell her that for which he had come, the history of a man.
Green stones, the sunlight breaking against the flaws in a shower of golden sparks; green as the pulp of a Champagne grape; the drums of jeopardy! Murder and loot; he could understand. Immediately after the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal dust completed his make-up. "I shan't be back until morning," he announced.
A bluish flame shot up, breaking into countless sparks, and then died. Lucretia watched him without speaking.
Rex flung his struggling burden on the billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies of the entire company. "It was lucky I was passing when it happened," panted Rex; "some one had better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight."
"Then I wouldn't think of taking a wife." "Troubles have been too heavy for me to bear. I don't think I was intended to bear trouble." "'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward," said Matthew. "I suppose so. But one man's luck is harder than another's. They've been too many for me, and I feel that I'm sinking under them. It's no good my thinking of marrying now."
Fronting the Pope, with his fair head thrown back, and his blue eyes flashing with all the soul-light of a swift, unwarped intelligence, he stood, and the white shrunken figure of the old man in the gilded chair raised itself as if by some interior electric force, slowly, slowly higher and higher the deep-set old eyes staring into the brilliant youthful ones staring staring till they seemed to protrude and tremble under their shelving brows, like the last sparks of a flame about to fall into extinction.
The sun's last rays dyed the mountain slopes a brilliant orange. On the winding red road shone like a rivulet of sparks the cuirasses of a group of horsemen approaching cautiously on a trot, as if exploring the way.
By day the din of his hammer rarely ceased, and by night the flame and sparks from his chimney were a Pharos to all travellers approaching the town. Children were born to him, for which he blessed God, and worked the harder. He attained a moderate prosperity, secure from want, but still dependent upon labor for bread.
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