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At all events I know Hourigan's story to be a lie, for as he came up the avenue I was in the shrubbery, looking for a cock I shot, which dropped among the hollies, and there was certainly nobody there but this strange fellow and Hourigan, both of whom chatted to each other for some minutes across the hedge; and, by the way, I now remember that they kept watching about them suspiciously, as if they did not wish to be seen speaking together.
The journey, too, is charming, both by the ordinary track that descends from Rossano and skirts the foot of the hills through olives and pebbly stream-beds, ascending, finally, across an odorous tangle of cistus, rosemary and myrtle to the platform on which the convent stands or by the alternative and longer route which I took on the homeward way, and which follows the old water conduit built by the monks into a forest of enormous chestnuts, oaks, hollies and Calabrian pines, emerging out of an ocean of glittering bracken.
Wedmore turned out his pockets, taking care to disperse his largesse as widely as possible. The girls helped him, hunting high and low for coins, among which, urged by the crowd in no subdued voice to "come down handsome," sixpences and shillings presently made their welcome appearance. "Oh, the hollies!" whispered Doreen to her sister.
No other girl in Steynholme walked like her. She was slim enough to dispense with tight corsets, and tall enough to wear low-heeled shoes, nor did she need to pinch her toes in order to gain the semblance of small feet. After her went Robinson, keyed to exultation by this outcome of his watchfulness. She was going to The Hollies, of course.
"You will think I am always gazing in the direction of The Hollies, but my room commands this house so fully that I cannot help seeing or hearing anything unusual. A few minutes ago I heard what I thought was a muffled gunshot. I looked out, and saw your window thrown open, though the light was dim, and only a candle was showing in the smaller window.
Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of their contemplation.
A glance over the shoulder of the reader, were one so impolite as to take that liberty, would have disclosed, among others, this passage on the printed page: "But yet you are to note, that as you see some willows or palm trees bud and blossom sooner than others do, so some trouts be, in rivers, sooner in season; and as some hollies or oaks are longer before they cast their leaves, so are some trouts in rivers longer before they go out of season."
He would see instantly how interested Miss Melhuish was in the owner of The Hollies, while she, a smart Londoner, would recognize in Siddle an informant worth all the rest of the babblers in Steynholme.
Below the junction of the two streams our own river flowed swiftly, through a straight reach, to the mouth of the still lagoon where Mare Run came in. Here we made our second camp, on the point, among the pines and the hollies. For here, at last, we were in the heart of the region of laurels, which we had come to see.
Siddle to the edge of the cliff about twenty-five minutes past four, the first thing they saw was the local police-constable on the lawn of The Hollies putting down a gill of "best Sussex" at a draught. "Well!" cried the chemist icily, "I wonder what Superintendent Fowler would say to that if he knew it?"
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