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The man who is dead was killed by no wish of mine. Yet I dared not run the risk of arrest. The bearer of this is an old friend of mine who will herself be in peril by delivering this. Trust her, and destroy this. She will tell you how to keep in touch with me." There was no signature. Mechanically Eileen tore the letter in two and dropped the fragments on the blazing fire.
"Well, sir, what is your pleasure?" said the big man, in a rough tone, as I stood there looking at him wistfully as well I might for upon that man, at the time of which I am speaking, my principal, I may say my only, hopes rested. "Sir," said I, "my name is so-and-so, and I am the bearer of a letter to you from Mr. so-and-so, an old friend and correspondent of yours."
It was for her sake he had sinned; and now he implored her to keep his secret, and to return to him all his letters on that subject, as well as those he had sent as proofs. He dare not trust them to the mails, but a faithful friend, though a poor man like himself, would come with a note from him, and he would be a trusty bearer. The friend had come but the morning of Abbot's arrival.
From the gloomy forests and bleak mountains of the North came dark and terrible fancies, malignant enchanters, and death-dealing spirits, supposed to haunt the earth and sea; from Arabia and the East came gorgeous pictures of palaces built of gold and precious stones, magic rings which transport the bearer from place to place, love-inspiring draughts, dragons and fairies; from ancient Greece and Rome came memories of the heroes and mysteries of mythology, like old coins worn and disfigured by passing, through ages, from hand to hand, but still bearing a faint outline of their original character.
I think I have seen her but three times since her childhood once riding with her father, then accidentally at church, and again a few evenings before I left, at the graveyard, where she was dressing a tombstone with flowers. There we exchanged a few words for the first time, and this reminds me that I am bearer of a message yet undelivered.
The first thing to be done now was the very last he would have owned to purposing during her life-time. Release from that prison had been the woman's prayer, year in and year out, these ten years, and Death was the bearer of the answer to that prayer, not her husband. But now, from the day of her sudden decease, the prison had become to him dreary beyond endurance.
"If your commissioner arrives here by the 1st of September, and you have given him your orders, sending by him two hundred thousand francs to place in our storehouses the supplies we profess to have secured in remote country places, we shall be absolutely solvent and regarded as blameless. You can trust the soldier who is the bearer of this letter with a draft in my name on a house in Algiers.
Thus the missionary translator, if he be at all aware of the awful implement which he is wielding, of the tremendous crisis in a people's spiritual life which has arrived, when their language is first made the vehicle of the truths of Revelation, will often tremble at the work he has in hand; he will tremble lest he should permanently lower or confuse the whole spiritual life of a people, by choosing a meaner and letting go a nobler word for the setting forth of some leading truth of redemption; and yet the choice how difficult, the nobler itself falling how infinitely below his desires, and below the truth of which he would make it the bearer.
He read: "JULIO: The bearer of this is the wife of Pedro Valdez. You are to take her and her family in, and give them the best the house contains; the best, do you hear? put them in the marble guest-chamber, and place the house at their disposal. Send for Doctor Blanco to attend them; let Teresa wait upon them, and let her furnish them with clothes from my wardrobe.
To this Frobisher made reply that, if it suited the admiral equally well, he would much prefer to accompany him to Tien-tsin; for he was extremely anxious to secure the appointment as captain of the cruiser, and knew from what he had already learned of Chinese officialdom that he would have a far better chance with Wong-lih by his side as sponsor, than he would as the mere bearer of a letter of recommendation from the admiral.
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