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The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife uplifted. The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.
He sprang to his feet and took a step or two toward the door leading into the hall, but his wife caught his arm and clung to it tightly. "No, no! Wait! wait!" she cried, in a deep whisper, while her face grew-ashen pale. For some moments they stood with repressed breathing, every instant expecting to hear the loud report of a pistol.
In an instant the door opened and closed upon the intruder and he was gone. For a second there was silence, and then, with a little sob, Lollie Marsh collapsed in a heap on the floor. Colonel Dan Boundary looked from one white face to the other. "There's a hundred thousand pounds for any one of you who gets that fellow," he said, breathing hard, "whether it is man or woman."
The fresh breeze of a few hours before had dwindled away to a mere breathing, while inshore it had fallen a flat calm, leaving five small craft probably bound for the Pearl Islands, some forty miles to the southward and eastward idly swinging upon the low ground swell in the midst of the reflected image of the town and the hilly country behind it.
When Tom reached the prostrate figure on the grass at the foot of the old oak tree, the youth bent quickly over the man. There was an ugly cut on his head, and blood was flowing from it. But Tom quickly noticed that the stranger was breathing, though not very strongly. "Well, he's not dead just yet!" exclaimed the youth with a sigh of relief. "But I guess he's pretty badly hurt.
Down the street, around first one corner and then another, he kept on in fierce pursuit for some moments; then, finding breathing difficult, he paused and leaned against the step railing of a high porch, to better get his bearings. Disappointment and fury were overmastering him.
He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the low chair beside it. "I've given that cur a lesson he won't forget," he exclaimed, breathing hard, the redness deepening in his face. She turned on him in joy and trembling. "John! Oh, John! You didn't follow him? Oh, what happened? What have you done?" "No. I didn't follow him. But there are some things that even the powers above can't stand.
A light-brown linen vest, stamped with innumerable interlocked horseshoes, covered his protuberant stomach, upon which a heavy watch chain of hollow links rose and fell with his difficult breathing, clinking against the vest buttons of imitation mother-of-pearl. S. Behrman was the banker of Bonneville. But besides this he was many other things. He was a real estate agent.
She dabbed her handkerchief at her eyes, muttered: "My Heavens, what a fool!" apropos of nothing tangible, and stared dully out at the forlorn waste of cinders with rows of shining rails running straight across it upon ties half sunken in the black desolation, and at the red abomination which was the pump-house squatting beside the dripping tank, the pump breathing asthmatically as it labored to keep the sliding water gauge from standing at the figure which meant reproach for the grimy attendant.
He stood a second waiting for an answer, and then he started for the boat, but stopped at the edge of the shadows. "What's wrong, Thirkle? Sing out, can't ye? What's gone amiss?" Thirkle's legs were quiet now, but I could hear his heavy breathing, and it reminded me of the steam exhaust from an ice-factory.
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