United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre of youth, came to Emsden's ear. His eyes followed the sound quickly. The little sisters of Peninnah Penelope Anne were on the floor before a playhouse, outlined by stones and sticks, and with rapt faces and competent fancies, saw whatsoever they would.
The woods seemed full of maddened, frightened cattle, and Emsden's horse was frantically galloping after the cavalcade of hunters and their pack-train, all the animals more or less beyond the control of the men. He felt it an ill chance that left him thus alone and afoot in this dense wilderness, several days' travel from the station.
"Well, sir," Ronackstone began in a tone of a quasi-apology, "we were just saying that is, I sez to X, who was in here a while ago, I sez, 'I'll tell you what is goin' to happen, I sez, 'old Gentleman Rick, excuse the freedom, sir, 'he'll be wantin' to send somebody else in Ralph Emsden's place. X, he see the p'int, just as you see it.
He rode much of the time with the reins loose on his horse's neck, and perhaps no man in the saddle had ever been so addicted to psalmody since the days of Cromwell's troopers. His theological disputations grated peculiarly upon Emsden's mood, and he always laid at his door the disaster that followed.
"I will not deny" "That is, I said" "I meant to say," but these qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden's voice, once more rising stridently. "Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired. I didn't know there were any cow-pens about didn't use to be till after you had crossed the Keowee.
The knife was Emsden's only weapon, for his pistols were in the holster on the saddle, and his discharged rifle lay where he had flung it on the ground after firing. He had only time to wonder that his comrades vouchsafed him no assistance in his extremity. Men of such accurate aim and constant practice could easily risk sending a rifle-ball past him to stop that furious career.
Emsden's depression would have been more serious had he not fortunately sundry tokens of the old man's favor to cherish in his memory, which seemed to intimate that this elusiveness was only a shrewd scheme to delay and thwart him rather than a positive and reasonable disposition to deny his suit.
Word Of The Day