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When we had finished our supper, I told Mrs Cottier that perhaps we could harness old Greylegs to the trap, but this she thought would never do, as the drifts on the road made it such bad going; at last I persuaded her to mount old Greylegs and to ride astride like a boy, or like so many of the countrywomen in our parts.
That's not one of mine." She took the parcel from me and turned it over before opening it. Mrs Cottier noticed it first. "Oh," she cried, "there's a letter, too. I wonder if it's meant for me?" We untied the rope yarn and the paper fell upon the table; we opened it out, wondering what message could be written on it.
The saintly Francesco da Calabria, relics from Florence, from Rome, the Holy Oil from Rheims, turtles from Cape Verde Islands all were powerless; the arch dissembler must now face the ineluctable prince of the dark realms, who was not to be bribed or cajoled even by kings. When at last Louis took to his bed, his physician, Jacques Cottier, told him that most surely his hour was come.
The smoke had long since blown out of doors. The air in the barn was clear and fresh. The fire had died down to a ruddy heap of embers, which glowed and grew grey again, as the draughts fanned them from the doorway. By the light of the fire I could see Mrs Cottier, sitting on the floor, with her back against the wheel of her trap, which had been dragged inside to be out of the snow.
He is his own master, standing on his own threshold, and finds no need to assert his equality by rudeness. He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered bench without dreaming of any such apology as an English cottier offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls. He has worked out his independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body.
The time-honored policy of the English Government, that all the open abuses of landlordism should be watched over and protected with the most jealous care, while, on the other hand, the wretched farmer and cottier is supposed to have no rights to defend and guard, should be abandoned at once and forever, with a firmness that can leave no room for doubt or equivocation, if the restoration of confidence on the part of the Irish is esteemed any thing worth.
I wondered what they would do to Mr Cottier; I wondered if ever I should get home again; I wondered whether the coastguards would have sufficient sense to arrest Marah if they saw him on the roads. In wondering like this, the day slowly dragged to an end; and at the end of the day, just before a watery sunset, Marah and the others returned, leading Mr Cottier as their prisoner.
He sat down on a chest and began to write. "No," he added; "you had better write. Say this: 'I am safe. I shall be back in three weeks' time. Say I have gone to stay in Somersetshire with Captain Sharp. Do not worry about me. Do not look for me. I am safe. There; that's enough. Give it here. Hankin, deliver this letter at once to Mrs Cottier, at the Snail's Castle.
"Well," said Mrs Cottier, looking at me rather sharply, "we will keep the things, and say nothing about them: but we must find out what duty should be paid on them, and send it to the exciseman at Dartmouth. That will spare our consciences."
It was cruel of me; but I thought of Mrs Cottier, with her beautiful kind face, lying in a drift of snow, and the thought was dreadful to me. I got down from the saddle, and put my lantern on the ground, and tried to drag him forward, but it was useless. He would not have stirred if I had lighted a fire under him. When he had the instinct to stand still, nothing would make him budge a yard.
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