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Updated: May 26, 2025
The colour rushed over Mike's cheek and brow; his heart began to beat violently, and his limbs to tremble. There was a long silence, broken only by the old familiar song of the lark sounding jubilantly from above their heads; the rustling of the tall fawn-coloured grasses that grew among the stones, and the distant faint lowing of cattle.
Beautiful as the whole line of country is, I was totally unconscious of it; and even Mike's conversational powers, divided as they were between myself and the two postilions, were fruitless in arousing me from the deep pre-occupation of my mind by thoughts of home. It was, then, with some astonishment I heard the boy upon the wheeler ask whither he should drive me to.
When the kitten grew to be a cat she gravely watched under Mike's awning during his short absences with Tom, and not a soul ever touched the property she guarded. Country folk who came to market on Saturday invariably saluted Mike with their kind country friendliness, and brought him all sorts of little gifts in the shape of fruit, and even of something more substantial when a pig was killed.
Some while previous there had been a great rush to the place, so great that it was almost excavated; then the rush took a different direction, and few now cared to work on the two or three spots that had been left untouched. Like many other localities considered "worked out," as much remained in the ground as had been taken from it, and as each day added to their store, Mike's hilarity increased.
The excitement of the past few days must have had a stimulating effect on Mike's mind shaken it up, as it were, for now, for the second time in two days, he displayed quite a creditable amount of intuition. He might have been misled by Adair's apparently deprecatory attitude toward Sedleigh, and blundered into a denunciation of the place.
"Chum dear," he said, "I've brought bad news for you." "Michael's dead!" Meg stood still and dropped her brother's arm. It was a pitiful face, that paled to the lips as her eyes gazed into Freddy's. "No, Meg, Mike's not dead." "Then he's dying, and you're afraid to tell me!" Margaret strode forward, as if she was then and there starting off to find her dying lover. Freddy laid his hand on her arm.
The defection of the Irishman caused the captain great pain, while it produced surprise even in the serjeant. Mike's fidelity had been thought of proof; and, for an instant, the master of the place was disposed to believe some evil spirit had been at work to corrupt his people. "This is more than I could have expected, Joyce!" he said, as much in sorrow as in anger.
"Simply because the Superintendent considers The Fort a strong strategic point, and there are a lot of young fellows and a few families there who are not of Father Mike's flock and who could never be persuaded to attend his church.
"It is not a large school," he said, "and I don't suppose it could play Wrykyn at cricket, but it has one merit boys work there. Young Barlitt won a Balliol scholarship from Sedleigh last year." Barlitt was the vicar's son, a silent, spectacled youth who did not enter very largely into Mike's world. They had met occasionally at tennis-parties, but not much conversation had ensued.
After all, what a lot of pleasant things those hard years had given them to remember! So they kept the evening going, and it was not till an early hour of the following day that this important volume of Henry's life was finally closed. While Henry had been busily engaged in winning Angelica and writing and printing his little book, Mike's fortunes had not been idle.
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