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In those days no one thought of forbidding gambling. One evening Thorpe, who had been too busy to remember Phil's violin, although he noticed, as he did every other detail of the camp, the cripple's industry, and the precision with which he performed his duties, strolled over and looked through the window. A dance was in progress.
He was gentle of heart, though it was his trade to make sharp speeches, and there were wonderful delicacies of thought and feeling far down in his suffering cripple's nature. "Come," he said softly, when he had waited a long time, and when he thought she was growing more quiet. "You must let me take you away, Doña Maria Dolores, for we cannot stay here." "Take me back to him," she answered.
He had now reached Peter Cripple's house. A figure leaned against the wall; Otto paused, measured it with his eye to ascertain who it was, and recognized German Heinrich. "What do you want with me?" inquired Otto. Heinrich raised his hand in token of silence, beckoned him forward, and opened a little gate which led to the back of the house. Otto mechanically followed him.
It was a strange spectacle to see this being, so full of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, condemned to that helpless decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat, not as in the resigned and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whom in the prime of life the rack has broken, leaving the limbs inert, the mind active, the form as one dead, the heart with superabundant vigour, a cripple's impotence and a Titan's will!
"But do you possess all the proofs?" asked Valenglay eagerly. "Here they are," said Perenna, producing the pocket-book which he had taken out of the cripple's jacket. "Here are letters and documents which the villain preserved, owing to a mental aberration common to all great criminals. Here, by good luck, is his correspondence with Hippolyte Fauville.
Curtis put her arms about the girl from the Red Mill and kissed her warmly at the door. "Dear, dear!" said the cripple's mother, "how your own mother would have loved you, if she had lived until now. You are like sunshine in the house."
The devil's game-preserve, you mean," Bunsen suddenly broke in. "The devil's game-preserve, then!" Simpson was defiant. "The ship calls here every other Saturday," was all Bunsen said to that. "You may need to know. I'll send your trunk ashore." He stepped into the cripple's boat and started for the ship.
Again there was silence, then Parish Thornton turned his eyes, following the cripple's gaze, toward the open door and found himself gazing into the muzzles of two rifles presented toward his breast.
"No," said the Cobbler, suddenly, "I don't believe it." "Believe what?" asked Waife, startled. "That you are " The Cobbler paused, bent forward, whispered the rest of the sentence close in the vagrant's ear. Waife's head fell on his bosom, but he made no answer. "Speak," cried Merle; "say 't is a lie." The poor cripple's lip writhed, but he still spoke not.
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