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The level, open road they had been clearing on the gallop, had gradually drawn within high banks, which as they went on grew higher and broken, till the country assumed the character of a glen or deep valley. Opening a little here and there, this valley shewed ahead of them now a succession of high, long, dingy buildings; and a large, rapid stream of water was seen to run under the opposite bank.
Only Catharine reclined calmly in her chair, and with beaming eyes looked across to Thomas Seymour, whose handsome countenance betrayed to her the gratification and satisfaction which he felt at this clearing up of her mysterious night-wandering.
She was suffering from a slight feverishness, and her eyes, unclosed throughout the night, were heavy with a pressure which was not of conscious fatigue. Having helped in clearing the table and ordering the kitchen, she was going upstairs when her mother spoke to her for the first time. 'I see you've still got your headache, Mrs. Hood said, with plaintiveness which was not condolence.
"I was up to twelve year at the time of the Big Wind that was in '39, and I was over at Roxborough with my father that was clearing timber from the road, and your father came out along the road, and he was wild seeing the trees and rocks whipped up into the sky the way they were with the wind. But what was that to the bitter time of the Famine that came after?"
Cassius, after he had succeeded in clearing Syria of the invaders, was made by Aurelius a sort of generalissimo; and being thus free to act as he chose, determined to carry the war into the enemy's country, and to try if he could not rival, or outdo, the exploits of Trajan fifty years previously.
He walked about his room for some relief. He looked out of the window. It was getting late; the sky was clearing, as it does in London at that hour, and he saw the stars. There was nothing to help him there. They mocked him rather with their imperturbable, obstinate stillness. At last he turned round, fell upon his knees, and poured out himself before his Maker, entreating Him for light.
The carpenter had just sounded the well, and had announced the joyous news that at last the pumps were gaining upon the leak which announcement was greeted with a feeble cheer from the now utterly exhausted men, who had for so long been toiling at the almost hopeless task of clearing the ship of the inflowing water when a sudden and dreadful change occurred in the weather.
He had about given up when, in the last quarter of the horizon he saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, what looked like a fine trickle of blackish smoke that appeared to rise from a shapeless mound that bulged above the monotonous level. "Smoke means fire, and fire means man," he said, excitedly. The sky was rapidly clearing. A few stars had already appeared.
But we'll make it this time. It's clearing up nicely and we're only forty miles from Portsmouth. Keep your lips stiff, fellows, and we'll be eating breakfast ashore!" The dingey pulled off again, narrowly escaping capsizing more than once, and ten minutes afterwards the Catspaw was once more wallowing along in the wake of the cruisers.
All that evening her behaviour was strange. As she waited at the supper table she seemed to be subduing laughter, and in clearing away she for the first time broke a plate; whereupon she burst into tears, and begged forgiveness so long and so wearisomely that she had at last to be ordered out of the room.
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