Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
For the insult had been so wanton, so gross, so brutal, that there was not one of the witnesses who had not felt shame, not one whose sympathy had not been for a moment with the victim, and who did not experience a pang on his account as he stood, mild and passive, before them. Payton alone was moved only by contempt. "Lord above us, man!" he cried, finding his voice again. Are you a Quaker?
"I will," Morty answered, genuinely distressed. "But I'm asking, is there no other way?" "There is none," Asgill said. And he opened the gate. Payton was waiting for him on the path under the yew-trees, with two of his troopers on guard in the background. He had removed his coat and vest, and stood, a not ungraceful figure, in the sunshine, bending his rapier and feeling its point with his thumb.
"And now," he said gaily, as he stood up, "the mask!" He did not see the change for he seemed to have no suspicion but as he rose, the door of the room behind him became fringed with grinning faces. Payton, the two youths who had leant from the window of the inn and who had carried his words, a couple of older officers, half a dozen subalterns, all were there and one or two civilians.
The next moment he came to attention, for slowly past the window moved Captain Payton himself, riding Flavia's mare, and talking with one of the young bloods who walked at his stirrup. The man and the horse! The Colonel began to understand that something more than wantonness had inspired Payton's conduct the previous night.
The more grave could hardly keep the more hilarious in order. The curtain was ready to go up on what they promised themselves would be the most absurd scene. The stranger who fought no duels, yet thought that a lesson or two would make him a match for a dead-hand like Payton was ever such a promising joke conceived?
Once more the same thing happened Asgill rushed in, Payton parried or evaded with the ease and coolness of long-tried skill. By this time Asgill, forced to keep his blade in motion, was beginning to breathe quickly. The sweat stood on his brow, he struck more and more wildly, and with less and less strength or aim.
Asgill continued, a twinkle, which he made no attempt to hide, in his eye. "No one, I'm meaning, Major, of his sort of force at all! Begad, boys, you'll see some fine fencing for once! Ye'll think ye've never seen any before I'm doubting!" "I'm not sure that I can remain to-morrow," Payton said in a surly tone. For he began to suspect that Asgill was quizzing him.
"For any but a mean person," Colonel John continued, drawing himself up to his full height, "finding that he had insulted one who could not meet him on even terms one who could not resent the insult in the manner intended would have deemed it all one as if he had insulted a one-armed man, or a blind man, and would have set himself right by an apology." At that word Payton found his voice.
I went at once to a certain bishop; told him the whole story, not in quite such a lengthy shape as I have told it to you; and begged him to reinstate me in my office." "And what did he say?" "Nothing. The good man did not venture upon many words. He held out his hand to me; shook mine warmly; and here I am, you see, curate of St. Thomas's, Purleybridge, and husband of Lizzie Payton.
But he had not Asgill's self-control, and his sulky tone belied his words. "Still I come at an awkward time, perhaps?" Payton answered, looking with a grin from one to the other. For the first time it struck him that the suspicions at headquarters might be well-founded; in that case he had been rash to put his head in the lion's mouth. For it had been wholly his own notion.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking