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And the result for me had been innumerable vivid but confused impressions of the young Englishman who had by chance invaded Leavitt's solitude and had lingered there, held by some attraction, until he sickened and died. It was like a jumbled mosaic put together again by inexpert hands. "Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?" "Quite the contrary," I answered.
Peet's housekeeping: some battered books, and singed holders for flatirons, and the faded little shoulder shawl that I had seen her wear many a day about her bent shoulders. There were her old tin match-box spilling all its matches, and a goose-wing for brushing up ashes, and her much-thumbed Leavitt's Almanac. It was most pathetic to see these poor trifles out of their places.
In 1879 the company had consolidation with the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company. The name, Pipe Springs, had its origin, according to A.W. Ivins, in a halt made there by Jacob Hamblin and others. William Hamblin claimed he could shoot the bottom out of Dudley Leavitt's pipe at 25 yards, without breaking the bowl. This he proceeded to do.
I began to evolve a fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly sway over its unnatural processes. With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the brush, following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode.
Leavitt's unconscious of the serious misfortune which had befallen him. He went into the sitting room and talked a while with Mr. Leavitt, and at ten o'clock took his lamp and went up to bed. While he was undressing he felt in his pocket for his money, intending to lock it up in his trunk as usual. His dismay may be conceived when he could not find it.
"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty he may have embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's books and things the material evidence of his having lived there " "And having died there?" "Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with him "
Ten minutes later he was at Samuel Leavitt's store, where he knew McCleary would be found at this time of the day. Before Neal could speak, his friend walked quickly out of the building toward the shore of the harbour, giving the would-be mill-owner an expressive look, which plainly told that he was to follow.
Between them a small dancing faun in greenish bronze tripped a Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a transport of derisive laughter. For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with diabolical mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's own cynical laugh.
Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses all this, as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's niece had made me frankly curious about the girl.
"From what I can learn, he has been under William Leavitt's control since they were children. Shorty tried to get away from his brother twice, but each time William found and punished him so brutally that the boy was afraid to venture again. There are scars on Shorty's feet made by a hot iron the last time he tried to escape from his brother. Shorty is not quite nineteen yet.
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