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His brain throbbed and his heart ached, as he endeavored to disentangle the bewildering fancies of his sleep from wakeful reality. He lay with his face to the wall, and the grotesque decorations of the paper assumed ghostly forms, and moved menacingly before his eyes, thrilling him through and through. In a few moments the murmur of voices close at hand aroused him more effectually.

I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor in the late conflict with Turkey.

Fortunately, it was his left arm that hung helpless by his side. His fingers groped feverishly in the cavernous folds of his overcoat pocket. Power, who had dashed against the wall, smashing the glass of one of the pictures, had already recovered his balance and turned around. The little revolver, with whose use Philip was barely acquainted, flashed suddenly out in the lamplight.

A large engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover, in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora, and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her bedroom to write.

Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed, till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.

Ignorance goes hand in hand with obstinacy, and these simple old peasant folk defended their stupidity with a veritable wall of impenetrable incredulity. The Subaltern was still laboriously engaged in explaining matters to the man, when part of the Headquarter's Staff trotted up the road with a clatter and a swing and scurry that looked as if they were wanted very urgently on the left.

The four-posted bed, which took up no inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire, which burned clear and bright; a door in the wall to the left, between the bed and the window, communicated with the room which my servant appropriated to himself.

While he spoke the young Squire had climbed on to the top of the wall and stood there balanced, the very image of grace and spirit and gallantry, his bridle hanging from one hand and his whip grasped in the other.

Ten minutes later the two boys slipped out the rear door of the house. Dicky was soon limping through the trees of a thickly-foliaged orchard, Bob close behind. Stooping under the low branches, step by step they advanced. No one was in sight. A last glance behind and the boys ducked through the leafy hedge, wriggled over a low wall, and rolled into a deep ditch beside it.

This idea did not strike Tom Fillot, who got well out and was about to climb up, when a blow came with a whish within an inch of his head. "Miss is as good as a mile," he said, coolly. "Here you, sir; it's rank mutiny to resist the Queen's men. Put down that capstan bar and surrender." "Come up and take it away from me, mister," said the American, with a laugh. "Wall, why don't you come on?"