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It is not surprising that, under this strain and stress, even that magnificent physique showed signs of breaking down, like every other writer's. A long holiday on the Mediterranean, and another at Torquay, restored him happily to his wonted health; but he saw he must now choose between schoolmastering and journalism. To run the two abreast was too much, even for James Runciman's gigantic powers.
The old priest was in bed, dying as the boy had said, but he still retained the use of his faculties, and could speak in his wonted slow and gentle voice.
It was chiefly this new experience of his that was sobering him, but it helped him not a little to check his wonted boyish exuberance that at the table opposite him sat a strange young man, across whose dark, magnetic face there flitted, now and then, a lazy, cynical smile. Hughie feared that lazy smile, and he felt that it would shrivel into self-contempt any feeling of boastfulness.
It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered in the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying to pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead.
Here and there might be seen on the bank a small dreary deserted shed, where had sat, day after day, a starving fisherman, until the rising waters drove the fish from their wonted haunts, and left him to die. Tingane had been defeated; his people had been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee from their villages.
Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would pass the holy bread and wine. Across the aisle on either side, the pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity, and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.
What are they to do under such circumstances, or how support a life so bereft of its wonted supplies?
"Are the artillery all present, Captain Wentworth?" again demanded the Governor, after a moment of silence, and in his wonted firm authoritative voice. "All present, sir," rejoined the officer, following the example of the Adjutant, and saluting his chief. "Then let a drum-head court-martial be assembled immediately, Mr.
"Come forward, a couple of files, and seize this villain," resumed the governor with his wonted sternness of manner. "Mr. Lawson, see if his hut does not afford a rope strong enough to hang the traitor from one of his own apple trees." Both parties proceeded at the same moment to execute the two distinct orders of their chief.
Shouts and cries mingled fearfully with the sharper clang, the heavy fall of man and horse, the creaking of the engines, the wild shrieks of the victims within the walls mangled by the stones, or from the survivors who witnessed their fall all formed a din as terrific to hear, as dreadful to behold. With even more than their wonted bravery the Scotch fought, but with less success.
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