Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But he's been cal'latin', I cal'late, to use his political pull to get Leander exempted off. Nine boards out of ten, if they'd had a man from Orham on 'em, would have gone by what that man said in a case like Leander's. And Phineas, he was movin' heavens and earth to get one of his friends put on as the right Orham man.
Yet nothing came of this incident, beyond a proclamation by the President closing the ports of the United States to the offending frigates and ordering the arrest of the captain of the Leander wherever found. After all, the death of a common seaman did not fire the hearts of farmers peacefully tilling their fields far beyond hearing of the Leander's guns.
Ada had slipped a hand, clad in crimson silk, through Leander's arm as they groped through the gloom together, and shrank to his side now and then in an alarm which was only half pretended. But if her light pressure upon his arm made his heart beat at all the faster, it was only at the fancy that the trusting hand was his Matilda's, or so at least did he account for it to himself afterwards.
Finally, the unfortunate old man staggered out of the shop, preserved by Leander's unremitting watchfulness from the wrath of the goddess. Yet, such is the ingratitude of human nature, that he left the place vowing to return no more. "I thought I'd got a clown behind me, sir!" he used to say afterwards, in describing it.
He looked very hard at Tweddle as he spoke, and the hairdresser felt that this was a crucial moment the detective was still uncertain whether he had been mixed up with the affair or not. Leander's faculty of ready wit served him better here than on past occasions. "Aware? No, sir!" he said, with admirable simplicity. "Then that's why you didn't come the other evening!
A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance and the only thing that surprised me was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability."
"He's 'mongst the moonshiners, I reckon," was the universal surmise. "He'll be hid mighty safe 'mongst them." For where the still might be, or who was engaged in the illicit business, was even a greater mystery than Leander's refuge. Nothing more definite could be elicited than a vague rumor that some such work was in progress somewhere along the many windings of Hide-and-Seek Creek.
The story of Leander's swimming the Hellespont was looked upon as fabulous, and the feat considered impossible, till Lord Byron proved its possibility by performing it himself. In the "Bride of Abydos" he says, "These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne." The distance in the narrowest part is almost a mile, and there is a constant current setting out from the Sea of Marmora into the Archipelago.
Pauline toiled bravely over the endless array of pinafores which the youthful Hardings managed to make unpresentable in a week. 'Monotony even in gingham! she murmured; for Polly's were all of pink check, Lemuel's blue, and Leander's a dull brown. 'Saves sortin', had been the brief response, when she had suggested varying the colours in order to cultivate the æsthetic instinct in the wearers.
Laurelia sighed for the violin and Leander's music, though, as she always made haste to say, some pious people misdoubted whether it were not a sinful pastime. On such occasions it went hard with Leander not to divulge his late experiences and the connection of the pious Uncle Nehemiah therewith.
Word Of The Day