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Her eyes, clear and clever, were fixed on Lory's face as if seeking something there. There was an odd silence for a moment such as the superstitious say, is caused by the passage of an angel among human beings even the men carrying Lory seemed to tread softly. It was he who broke the spell. "Ah, mademoiselle!" he said gaily, "the fortune of war, you see!"
He was a very quick man, and folding the papers as he spoke, he tied them together with the faded pink tape which had been fingered by three generations of Vasselots. He laid the packet on the table close to Lory's hand. Then he glanced at Denise and fell into thought, arranging in his mind that which he had to say to her.
He was, however, the Baron de Melide, and his manner had that repose which belongs to the new aristocracy of France and to the shreds that remain, here and there, of the old. "Left my ambulance to subordinates," he explained as he shook Lory's hand. "Humanity is an excellent quality, but one's friends come first. It has taken me some time to find you. Have procured your parole for you.
She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she even mentioned Lory's name. "And the Count de Vasselot?" she inquired, in her usual curt form of interrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal in the vestry by the light of an altar candle. The baron shook his head and gulped down his food. "No news?" inquired Mademoiselle Brun. "None."
Between times the lads are always larkin' and puttin' up games on each other out of the stock of divilment that won't keep till the next run, each never quite so happy as when he can git the best of a mate on a trade or a wager. "One day little Raven and I galloped over to Lory's place. "'Whatever mischief are you and His Wisdom up to? sings out Lory to Raven, the minute we stopped at his porch.
But suddenly that bay divil's-spawn swerves from the course, dashes up and stops bang broadside against a barn; and there, with ears laid back tight to his head and muzzle half upturned, for four mortal hours the bay held Lory's off leg jammed so tight against the barn that, rowel and crop-cut hard as he might, the only thing Lory was able to free was such a flow of language, it was a holy wonder Providence didn't fire the barn and burn up the pair of them.
"Lory was lollin' in an easy-chair, lookin' out west across his spring lot. Directly I saw a twinkle in his eye, and followin' the line of his glance, there slouchin' in a fence corner I saw Lory's old white work-mare, Molly. Sometimes Molly pulled the buggy and the little Lings, but usually it was a plough or a mower for hers.
"Joggin' back from the 'worry' that evenin', Jack lay tight in Lory's flank till Lory had consented, apparently with great reluctance, to sell him Molly for five hundred dollars. "The very next week, Jack, Raven, and the two whips turned out on white hunters, Jack of course upon Molly and happy over the successful workin' out of his fad.
"Great was the quiet fun of Lory and Raven, though Lory's lasted little longer than Jack's joy of his white mount. Of course Jack was too game to let on he knew he'd been done, but not too busy to sharpen a rowel for Lory. "And the rankest wonder it was Lory niver saw it till Jack had him raked from flank to shoulder just stood and took it without a blink, like a donkey takes a lash.
"Presently the hounds opened at the 'throw-in, an Irish pack it takes near a steeplechase pace to stay with, and we were off on as stiff a course as even Lemon County can show. And a holy miracle was Lory's ridin' that day.
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