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Antonio is his name, I think, but he is a villain of no note an inferior bandit, though quite equal to his captain, no doubt, in selfishness and cruelty." On arriving at the hut or small farm at the head of the valley, they found its owner, a burly, good-humoured Creole, alone with his mother, an old woman whose shrivelled-up appearance suggested the idea of a mummy partially thawed into life.

She was a tall, thin, shrivelled-up old woman, not very old, fifty perhaps, but looking at least ten years more, very melancholy, and sometimes very cross. She had been notably religious, but that was gradually wearing off as she advanced in years. The rigid strictness of Sabbatarian practice requires the full energy of middle life.

Well, be it on your own heads. Why should I care for your miserable, shrivelled-up, parched little souls? Why should I care when I watch you all, with your hanging stomachs and your double chins, marching straight into such a hell as you've never conceived of. I know what's coming to you. I know what's in store for those well-filled stomachs of yours.

"It may be so; poor thing!" returned the sailor in a tender tone, as he looked at the shrivelled-up old creature, who was moving actively round the never-idle lamp, and bending with inquiring interest over the earthen pot, which seemed to engross her entire being. "But why do you wonder?"

"They had two sons, the kind of boys who play rough games with balls, bats or rackets from morning till night; then came two daughters, the elder a dry, shrivelled-up Englishwoman, the younger a dream of beauty, a heavenly blonde. When those chits make up their minds to be pretty, they are divine.

She, naturally so keen and hard-working, was content to take what the hour brought, and the hour brought various things: chess with the Swedish professor, or Russian dominoes with the shrivelled-up little Polish governess who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female gamblers.

It was a striking contrast, for he was a little shrivelled-up man, whose appearance made one laugh. "Well, master tailor," said I, "so you are going to marry this charming girl?" "Yes, sir, the banns have been published already." "You are a lucky fellow indeed to have so much happiness in store. When are you going to marry her?" "In ten or twelve days." "Why not to-morrow?"

There was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their faces, as faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered.

From this point her husband went on to tell about the arrival and wounding of the preacher, and how he had expressed an earnest desire to see her. While they were thus engaged, the prairie chief was similarly employed enlightening his own mother. That kind-hearted bundle of shrivelled-up antiquity was seated on the floor on the one side of a small fire.

These were to be seen lounging carelessly about in small groups, and were of all ages; from the hoary-headed, shrivelled-up hag, whose eyes still sparkled with a fire that her lank and attenuated frame denied, to the young girl of twelve, whose dark and glowing cheek, rounded bust, and penetrating glance, bore striking evidence of the precociousness of Indian beauty.