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For the wood grew denser, with a tangle of paths criss-crossing amid the undergrowth. And just then came the low mutter of cannon again, shaking the earth. We began to run forward, tripping in the gloom over brambles, and stumbling into holes. For a mile or so this lasted: and then, without warning, I heard a sound behind me, and look'd back, to find Delia sunk upon the ground.
Telling himself that it was only his imagination, he rolled over again and tried to sleep, but the excitement and the uncertainty made him sleepless. Again he heard a low mutter of subdued voices, then he sat straight up in his blanket.
She seemed indeed, stunned, wholly overpowered by his resolved and violent manner; and she had scarcely strength to mutter the answer that rose to her lips: "If it be so," she faltered out, "this village, then, I must never leave; for here I will die, die even by the hands of barbarians, and die a thousand times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel man, with any but the eyes of detestation.
To this day very sensible whist-players have a certain belief not, of course, a fixed conviction, but still a certain impression that there is 'luck under a black deuce, and will half mutter some not very gentle maledictions if they turn up as a trump the four of clubs, because it brings ill-luck, and is 'the devil's bed-post. Of course grown-up gamblers have too much general knowledge, too much organised common sense to prolong or cherish such ideas; they are ashamed of entertaining them, though, nevertheless, they cannot entirely drive them out of their minds.
Whatever you say, if you say it with a supercilious, cynical face, or an embarrassed countenance, or a silly, disconcerted grin, will be ill received. If, into the bargain, YOU MUTTER IT, OR UTTER IT INDISTINCTLY AND UNGRACEFULLY, it will be still worse received.
The pillaged suitor might mutter. The austere Puritan patriot might, in his retreat, grieve that one on whom God had bestowed without measure all the abilities which qualify men to take the lead in great reforms should be found among the adherents of the worst abuses. But the murmurs of the suitor and the lamentations of the patriot had scarcely any avenue to the ears of the powerful.
I can imagine nothing more likely to destroy natural feeling, nor to instil ingratitude and treachery into the whole character, than to press the hand of a parent, and calculate when that hand may be dust; than to sit down with strangers and reduce his life to the measure of an insurance-table; than to feel difficulties gathering round one, and mutter in fashionable slang, 'But it will be all well if the governor would but die. And he who has accustomed himself to the relief of post-obits must gradually harden his mind to all this."
Hawbury here relapsed into silence, and sat with a frown on his face, and a puzzled expression. At times he would mutter such words as, "Deuced odd!" "Confounded queer!" "What a lot!" "By Jove!" while Dacres looked at him in some surprise. "Look here, old fellow!" said he at last.
"Its just like the grinding old tyrant," he heard Moody mutter at this to another of his gang, "to keep us here on deck when there ain't no need for it!"
There was, alas! no counsel to be had from her father just at present: if she woke him, he would but mutter something not so much unlike an oath as it ought to be, and go to sleep again! "We want very much to reach Howglen I think that is what you call the place," she said. "You can't get there tonight, I'm afraid," returned Cosmo. "The road is, as you see, no road at all.
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