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"Take the letter which I read from Miss Lytton, which was found following the strange disappearance of the note from Thurston." He dipped a pen into a little bottle, and wrote on a piece of paper: What is your opinion about Cross's Headache Cure? Would you recommend it for a nervous headache? BURGESS THURSTON, c/o MRS. S. BONCOUR.
It was moonlight, and the change in Rodd's face passed unobserved, but it was scarlet, and felt so hot that the boy involuntarily raised his hand to his cheek, while a feeling of annoyance pervaded him as he looked at Joe Cross suspiciously, in the belief that the man must be bantering him; but as far as the boy could make out, Joe Cross's frank countenance was quite innocent of guile and he was speaking exactly as he felt.
I rose, and took off my hat; the men in the boat returned the cheers, dropped their oars in the water, and rowed to the schooner. I stepped on board, ordered the hands aft and read my commission, and then Cross's warrant; after which I went down into the cabin, for I wished to be alone. I was now in command of a vessel, and not more than twenty years old.
But some of our officers have forced the guard and broken open the house, and this instant I saw one of them with Mr. Cross's sword by his side." I never felt more mortified in my life. Then, after entreating her to be perfectly easy about her house and furniture in future, I took leave of this excellent lady, and flew to the guard to see if what I had heard were true.
At the end of the next mile, midway between Dinwiddie and Cross's Corner, stood the small log cabin of the former slave who had sent for him, and as he approached the narrow path that led, between oyster shells, from the main road to the single flat brown rock before the doorstep, he noticed with pleasure how tranquil and happy the little rustic home appeared under the windy brightness of the March sky.
A milder form of sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and ugly but indestructible 'immortelle' which is a wreath or cross or some such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellow rosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars kind of sorrowful breast-pin, so to say.
We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in the Valley an absolute secret.
And as he watched the well-built, smartly-rigged vessel with such knowledge as he had acquired during his life at the great English port, he made out, though fairly distant now, that there seemed to be something in Joe Cross's remarks, so that when he closed his glass to go down below, he began to dwell on the possibility of the smart brig being indeed a privateer, and this set him thinking of how horrible it would be if she did turn inimical and make an attempt at what would have been quite an act of piracy if she had followed the Maid of Salcombe out to sea and seized her as a prize.
Cross's menagerie be no longer a question, since the animals might be allowed to ramble about the Strand; and Snowdon or Cader Idris journey to the King's Theatre to listen to his inspirations. It is, however, impossible to calculate the benefits which this acquisition of musical skill might prove to the English people. What bloodshed and tribulation it would prevent.
"I've just had a message from one of our old servants calling me down to Cross's Corner," he pursued, "so I'm in a bit of a hurry. That's a bad thing, that murder down there yesterday, and I'm afraid it will mean trouble for the negroes. Mr. Blylie, who came to market this morning, told me a crowd had tried to lynch the fellow last night."
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