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"Anyway, Louis, to please you or anyone else I can't pretend to be ill. Now just forget it till it gets obtrusive. I shall." Over the roof-tops, through the moon haze streaming about the chimneys came a vision of the spaewife riding to Flodden after her man, riding from Flodden with the twin children wrapt in the Southrons' pennants. Marcella smiled a little.
The glorious forest was not then hidden by rows of banal roof-tops, and the dull drabs of barracks and prisons. In the warm spring mornings the glittering façade of the chateau was brilliant as a diamond against its setting, and the radiating avenues of the park leading from the famous terrace stretched out into infinite vistas that were most alluring.
Pipers were there too, mounted upon cars or turf-kishes; even the very roof-tops rang out their merry notes; the ensigns of the little fishing-craft waved in the breeze, and seemed to feel the general joy around them; while over the door of the village inn stood a brilliantly lighted transparency, representing the head of the O'Malleys holding a very scantily-robed young lady by the tips of the fingers; but whether this damsel was intended to represent the genius of the west, or my wife, I did not venture to inquire.
He quickened his step, and in his dark eyes those fires leaped into steady flames. The town was wakening from sleep. The driver of a milk-cart pointed a general direction for him across the roof-tops, but when he got into the wilderness of houses he lost that point of the compass and knew not which way to turn.
If he has suspicions, all he can do is to bide his time and follow the visitor home, should the route lie through the streets, or despatch a faithful slave-girl or jealous concubine on a like errand, should the way selected be over the roof-tops. In the country, under a very different set of conventionalities, much the same takes place.
The deserted night mirrored itself in a thin coating of snow that overlay the roof-tops. "They sleep," he thought. His head bent toward the wind. "The streets are empty. The night is mine. I must think of what has happened. There is something inexplicable in what has happened. My hands fought with a phantom. That, of course, is nonsense. "How do I know my hands fought?
The Mexicans, from roof-tops, from windows and other places of hiding, fired at an American uniform wherever they could see it. The very style of combat adopted by the enemy made it necessary for the Americans, avoiding needless losses, to fight back in the same sniping way. Slowly, indeed, were these numerous detachments of Mexicans, numbering some eight hundred men in all, driven back.
But it was plainly not to that that she referred. He shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot remember." "You told me of an attack made upon a Scottish town, what time the King was there in the year '15. He forced a passage through nine grenadiers with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops, where he played a game of hide-and-seek among the chimneys. Ah, you remember the story now.
From the flat roof-tops the weekly visit of a merchant-vessel is duly looked for, and a long black steamer lies at anchor for the day in the narrow ribbon of blue sea seen to the east, near the white Customs House, which stands back from the beach.
And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gaslight, and all was dark as pitch, howls and laughter, as of the damned, ringing through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stepped the boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over the grimy roof-tops.
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