Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
It was easy of identification: its broken-down, lopsided top marked it beyond mistake. An instant later Dieppe recognised the burly figure of the driver, who was walking by his horses' heads. "Wonderfully convenient!" he exclaimed. "This fellow will carry you to Sasellano without delay."
He was pondering on this when one of the horses, frightened by the noise and rush of the water, reared up, while the other made a violent effort to turn itself, its comrade, and the carriage round, and head back again for Sasellano. The Captain sprang up, shouted, plied the whip; the driver stood on the trunk and yelled yet more vigorously; her Excellency clutched the rail with her hand.
Dieppe stood watching him as he went, making not direct for the Sasellano road, but shaping a course straight up the hill, walking as though he hardly knew where he was going. So he passed out of the Captain's sight and out of the list of the Countess of Fieramondi's creditors. A little smile dwelt for a moment on Dieppe's face. "I myself am very nearly a rascal sometimes," said he. Crack! crack!
"I will beg a passage; I have no fancy for another bath to-night." The lady would not resign herself to staying at Sasellano; the landlord would not engage to risk passenger, carriage, and horses in the flood.
But now well, in the first place, Dieppe was evidently not a humane man, and in the second, here was this pestilent river flooded to the edge of its banks, and presenting the most doubtful passage which had ever by the mockery of language been misnamed a ford. He was indeed between the devil and the deep sea that devil of a Dieppe and the deep sea of the ford on the road from Sasellano.
The sound of a whip rang clear; the clatter of hoofs and the grind of a wheel on the skid followed. A carriage dashed down the hill from Sasellano. Paul de Roustache had seen it, and stooped low for a moment in instinctive fear of being seen. Captain Dieppe, on the other hand, cried "Bravo!" and began to walk briskly towards the ford. "How very lucky!" he reflected.
I saw him last on the road across the river it leads to Sasellano, I believe." Dieppe kept his eye on his vanquished opponent, but Guillaume threatened no movement. The Captain dropped the revolver into his pocket, stooped to pull up a tuft of grass with moist earth adhering to it, and, with the help of his handkerchief, made a primitive plaster to stanch the bleeding of his ear.
They passed Paul de Roustache, who had no thought but to avoid them, and, once they were passed, took to the road and made off straight for Sasellano; they reached the descent and trotted gaily down it; they came within ten yards of the ford, and drew up sharply. The lady put her head out; the driver dismounted and took a look at the river. Shaking his head, he came to the window.
He could not see it where it reached the valley and came to the river; had he been able, he would have perceived that it ran down to and crossed the ford to which the landlord of the inn at Sasellano had referred.
"Get into the carriage go to Sasellano; catch Paul if you can, but leave me in peace," he said, and, diving into his pocket, he produced the five notes of a thousand francs which Paul de Roustache, in some strange impulse of repentance, or gratitude, had handed to him. "What you tell your employers," he added, "I don't care. This is a gift from me to you.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking