Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
Shortly after this, several bands of dancers of various sorts began to enter the arcade at different points, and among them one of sword-dancers composed of some four-and-twenty lads of gallant and high-spirited mien, clad in the finest and whitest of linen, and with handkerchiefs embroidered in various colours with fine silk; and one of those on the mares asked an active youth who led them if any of the dancers had been wounded.
Shortly after this, several bands of dancers of various sorts began to enter the arcade at different points, and among them one of sword-dancers composed of some four-and-twenty lads of gallant and high-spirited mien, clad in the finest and whitest of linen, and with handkerchiefs embroidered in various colours with fine silk; and one of those on the mares asked an active youth who led them if any of the dancers had been wounded.
Raby disappeared, and the sword-dancers returned to the kitchen, talking over this strange matter as they went. Grace retired to the drawing-room followed by Coventry. She sat silent some time, and he watched her keenly. "I wonder what has become of Mr. Raby?" Mr. Coventry did not know. "I hope he is not going out." "I should think not, it is a very cold night; clear, but frosty."
Then Foxey sang, to a violin accompaniment, "Now, fiddler, then, take up thy fiddle, Play the lads their hearts' desire, Or else we'll break thy fiddle, And fling thee a-back o' the fire." On this the fiddler instantly played a dance-tune peculiar to this occasion, and the five sword-dancers danced by themselves in a ring, holding their swords out so as to form a cone.
The Cairnhope sword-dancers, though stout fellows and strong against a mortal foe, were but stags against the supernatural; yet, led by Guy Raby, they advanced upon the old church with a pretty bold front, only they kept twenty yards in their leader's rear. The order was to march in dead silence.
But no, the man, with whose blows his body was sore, and his right arm utterly numbed, walked close to him between two sword-dancers with Raby-marks and Little-marks upon him, viz., a face spotted with blood, and a black eye. Little sighed. "Eh, that's music to me," said a friendly voice close to him. It was the King George of the lyrical drama, and, out of poetry, George the blacksmith.
The finest conjectures of research, though illustrated in the person of the priest himself, could have supplied him with no antidote to those terrors of ambushed assassination. In his investigations among the "sword-dancers" of Northern England, Mr.
Grace clasped her hands to him, with tears in her eyes; and as for Jael Dence, she assumed the authority with which she had been invested and hurried him bodily away; and the sword-dancers all gathered round him, and they carried him in triumphant procession, with the fiddler playing, and George whistling, the favorite tune of "Raby come home again," while every sturdy foot beat the hard and ringing road in admirable keeping with that spirit-stirring march.
The reply was that she had not been to the hall that day. But, soon afterward, Jael came up from the village, and went into the kitchen of Raby. There she heard news, which soon took her into the drawing-room. "Oh, miss," said she, "do you know where the squire is?" "Gone to the church?" asked Grace, trembling. "Ay, and all the sword-dancers at his back."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking