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It was flung open and a man staggered blindly over the sill, reeling and clutching at his breast with both gnarled, sinewy hands. "El Negrito!" his voice rose in a smothered sob. "He's hit the trail and coming fast. Look out for your " The stranger choked, caught at his throat and crumpled slowly to the floor, a thin scarlet stream pouring from his lips.
The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a fast walker and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, a natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely road, and has nothing whatever to think of.
The peasants, sun-browned, sinewy, their single garment a skirt of skins or of coarse cloth, guided oxen drawing carts, or asses laden with bundles, and up and down the road sounded the incessant jingling of bells from flocks of goats, and the gentle lowing of cattle, as they trotted along in clouds of red dust raised by their sharp hoofs.
The former was of a short, thick-set powerful frame, in which, by a happy ordering of nature, a little confirmed perhaps by long habit, the strength was principally seated about the broad and brawny shoulders, and strong sinewy arms, as if, in the construction of the man, the inferior members had been considered of little other use than to transfer the superior to the different situations in which the former were to display their energies.
The sound of those simple words produced an amazing effect upon the hearers. Dacres sprang down with a cry of joy. "Come, come!" he shouted to the ladies; "friends are here!" And running down the stairs, he reached the bottom and grasped the stranger by both arms. In the dim light he could detect a tall, slim, sinewy form, with long, black, ragged hair and white neck-tie.
Every lurking tendency to evil is easily blighted by that stimulating activity which brings moisture to the furrowed brow, which strengthens the sinewy arm, and stamps its wholesome seal upon the broad and hardened hand! It seems odd enough, to say, that among such are found the greatest and noblest phases of humanity, and yet, is it not so?
But the sinewy vise above only gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and heart and lungs. Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and shut off his breath.
And for the most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats.
He had too many irons in the fire to trouble himself much about Ireland. If it furnished him with a supply of fighting men clean-limbed, sinewy fellows who could run all day without a sign of fatigue, live on a handful of meal, and for a lodging feel luxurious with an armful of hay and the sheltered side of a stone it was pretty much all he wanted.
Off on the perilous flood for "faërie lands forlorn"! It made the world seem almost empty and very lonesome. And then the dog-days came, and I saw my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt a half-starved lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of the beast when the prey is scarce, and the ropy main current was like the lean, terrible muscles of its back.
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