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As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the bedclothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a little ebony crucifix. I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to the floor.
A big chuck-box stood in a corner near the fireplace, its top half open, revealing the supplies with which the receptacle was filled; some shelves on the other side of the fireplace were piled high with canned foods and bulging packages. The bunks were filled with bedclothing; and an oil-lamp stood on a triangular shelf in a corner near the door.
It was not the face of the old lady which I had feared to see, but that of a man with a coal-black beard, which seemed very familiar to me. I had scarcely looked upon it when a cry came from the grave where the men were working, and they threw up a white bundle, evidently a bundle of linen. This the inspector quickly opened, and displayed a heap of bedclothing and a pillow all stained with blood.
One of his hands was shoved up under his pillow with the fingers touching a small roll containing seven ten-dollar bills and one five-dollar bill; the other hand still gripped a fold of the coverlet as though the fatal stroke had come upon the old man as he lifted the bedclothing to draw it up over his face.
Mrs Love, before following the other two women downstairs, had helped the ailing Betty to get Mrs Duncomb settled for the night. In the dim candle-light and the faint glow of the fire that scarce illumined the wainscoted room the high tester-bed of the old lady, with its curtains, had seemed like a shadowed catafalque, an illusion nothing lessened by the frail old figure under the bedclothing.
The woman's head was moving slowly from side to side, as though she were making an effort to lift it; her eyelids were fluttering, and her hands were straying over the bedclothing, the fingers closing and unclosing. Lawler made a horrible grimace at Givens. "Get out of here, damn you!" he said. "Go out and take care of her horse anything! If you are in here when she wakes up, I'll kill you!
And then, observing that Lawler was paying no attention to him, he moved slowly toward one of the bunks the one Miss Wharton had occupied noting the disturbed bedclothing. A white piece of cloth, crumpled and soiled, lay on a gray blanket. He took it up swiftly, stuck it into the front of his heavy coat and turned again toward the fireplace.
Especially such a child is sensitive to a stuffy atmosphere or to an excess of bedclothes. Cool rooms and warm but light and porous clothing are essential. An electric torch, which can be flashed on the child for an instant, will assist the mother or nurse to make sure that the child has not thrown off all the bedclothing.
In the total absence of bed covering, beyond a thin night shirt, the three red rolls are not to be despised. Then put your troublesome and probably aching legs over the bigger red roll, and take your repose! Of course, when in the tropics you cannot expect to bury yourself in bedclothing, or to sleep in fur bags like an arctic explorer.
A single blanket was the only bedclothing provided. I had not lain long before I was driven, by an exceedingly offensive smell, to search for a cleaner neighborhood; but I found all the cots, fore and aft, were either occupied or engaged. I immediately returned, and that I might have a dernier ressort, left my shawl in that I had first obtained.
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