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We were still at table when my Lord Gambara arrived. He came on horseback attended by two grooms whom he left to await him. He was all in black velvet, I remember, even to his thigh-boots which were laced up the sides with gold, and on his breast gleamed a fine medallion of diamonds. Of the prelate there was about him, as usual, nothing but the scarlet cloak and the sapphire ring.
But in this instance there was no immediate hurry, and so he spent a full minute and a half over his toilet, and emerged with washed hands and face, sprucely brushed hair and beard, and his person attired in high rubber thigh-boots and leather-bound black oilskins. The night was black and thick with a drizzle of rain, and a heavy breeze snored through the Flamingo's scanty rigging.
The hearse was a cheap charity affair, furnished by the Maire of the arrondissement, though it was sprucely painted and decked with funeral cloth. The driver wore a huge black chapeau, a white cotton cravat, and thigh-boots, which, standing up stiffly as he sat, seemed to engulf him to the ears.
He wore a leather jerkin and great thigh-boots of grey leather, and from his girdle of hammered steel hung a dagger and the empty carriages of a sword. His cropped black head was bare, and in his hand he carried a cap of black velvet. We looked at each other awhile, and his eyes were sad and wistful, laden with pity, as I thought, for my condition.
Instinctively crouching down and seeking the covert of a few low bushes, Christian decreased the intervening distance by a few yards. The faint hope that it might prove to be a coastguard was soon dispelled. The heavy clothing and loose thigh-boots were those of a fisherman.
The other, Vantti he was called, a sturdy, thick-set fellow, stood with his hands in his pockets and a cigar between his teeth. Vantti came from the north-east, from Karelen, and was proud of it, as he was proud of his Karelen dialect and his enormous Karelen boots huge, crook-toed thigh-boots that seemed to swallow him up to the waist. Moisio came up to the two.
He was in long thigh-boots and leather jerkin, trailing an enormous sword from a crimson baldrick. He wore a broad felt hat with a draggled feather, and as he advanced he raised his great voice and roared out defiance, and threats of blood-curdling butchery to be performed upon all and sundry. On the roof of this vehicle sat Leandre alone.
'Are you going to send me out fasting? I said, affecting a worse humour than I felt. The landlord was standing by the window, stooping over a great pair of frayed and furrowed thigh-boots which he was labouring to soften with copious grease. 'Mademoiselle ordered no breakfast, he answered, with a malicious grin. 'Well it does not much matter, I replied grandly. 'I shall be at Auch by noon.
We accomplished it at last by hurling the brute backwards into the branch by main strength, and then wading ourselves through mud that just touched the upper edge of my thigh-boots. Once over, the track was easily found, and a barking chorus, performed by half a dozen vigilant mongrels, guided us up to the homestead we were seeking, just as the snow began to fall heavily.
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