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"Norman of Torn," he said, "so long as thou remain in England, pitting thy great host against the Plantagenet King and the nobles and barons of his realm, thou be but serving as the cats-paw of another. Thyself hast said an hundred times that thou knowst not the reason for thy hatred against them. Thou be too strong a man to so throw thy life uselessly away to satisfy the choler of another.
I continued, "you don't make a cats-paw of me. I see the game. You are for sitting in Madame de Sourdis' seat, and giving your son a Hat, and your groom a Comptrollership, and your niece a " "Hush, hush, M. de Rosny," he muttered, turning white and red, and wiping his brow with his kerchief. "MON DIEU! your words might " "If overheard, make things very unpleasant for M. de Perrot," I said.
Now and again a cats-paw would ripple across the plain of water, but there were no clouds, there was no sight of land. They kept on pulling. For three, for four days a week for ten days they tugged at the oars, except when a favouring breeze came. The water was reduced to a few pints, the food to a few days' half-rations.
I ought to take you down to this infernal crook of a Judge, and have you committed to a strait-jacket." "If," said Callomb, "you are content to play the cats-paw to a bunch of assassins, I'm not. The mail-rider went out this morning, and he carried a letter to old Spicer South. I told him that I was coming unescorted and unarmed, and that my object was to talk with him.
These thoughts did more for my spirits than I can well express; and the intolerable sense of loneliness was mitigated by the knowledge that I was watched, and therefore not alone. The day passed I know not how. The shadow as of tempest hung in the air, but never a cats-paw did I see to blurr the rolling mirror of the ocean.
As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw an islet of breeze, unheralded unfollowed as this ghostly cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights all closed like coppered eyes of the coffined and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery, even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel, threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king's officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy's daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood as these and other images flitted through his mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the repose of the noon.
"I say, old chap," he chuckled, "I s'pose that's what they mean by a hare-breadth escape?" Prowler grinned. "It's one on the Chief, anyway," said he joyfully. "Not a breath of wind, ye know, not so much as a cats-paw no chance of a chase." "What's that?" Captain Mittens had crept up behind the two mates and bawled in Prowler's ear. "What's that? No wind? Why not, I'd like to know?
There's some rotten dirty work going on somewhere; that's as plain as a pikestaff. I believe these people are simply using you as a cats-paw. All they want is to get hold of the secret of this new explosive of yours; then as likely as not they'll hand you over to the police, or else...." he paused. "Well, you've seen the sort of crowd they are.
"Yes, that's so; you'll be Rigou's cats-paw!" cried Fourchon, who alone understood his grandson. Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern. Madame Tonsard hailed him. "Is it true," she said, "that gleaning is to be forbidden?" Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in.
And, see here, keep your precious plans to yourself, now and always. I intend to know nothing of what you do." "I'm merely the cats-paw, eh? Well, never mind. Is old Cerise to be depended upon, do you think?" "Why not?" replied the girl. "Cerise belongs to the Von Taers body and soul!"
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