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I glanced at K., K. glanced at me. I nodded, so did K. "Certainly!" said I. Wherefore the Major led us over sandy hills and along sandy valleys and so to a dingy and weatherworn hut, in whose dingy interior we found a bright-faced subaltern in dingy uniform and surrounded by many dingy boxes and a heterogeneous collection of things.

"A dirty night we're going to have of it," remarked David Bright to Singing Peter, as he got into his tossing boat with some difficulty. "It's all in the Master's hands," replied Peter, looking up with a glad expression on his weatherworn face. With these words he left the mission smack and returned to his own vessel.

In days of old, when men had neither heart nor head to erect lighthouses for the protection of their fellows, many a noble ship must have been dashed to pieces there, and many an awful shriek must have mingled with the hoarse roar of the surf round these rent and weatherworn rocks. A gentleman who visited the Longstone rock in 1838, describes it thus:

He went out and closed the door; and, with his head in a whirl, Tom felt as if he could do nothing but stand there and think; but his uncle's words were still ringing in his ears, and hurriedly removing the slight traces of his journey, he took one more look from his window over the soft, fresh, sloping, far-stretching landscape of garden, orchard, fir-wood, and stream far below in the hollow, and then looked round to the right, to see standing towering up within thirty yards, the windmill, with its broken sails and weatherworn wooden cap.

In its place was a certain quiet soberness in which the scout sometimes saw flashes of Sheldon. Now Drew pulled the cord from his pocket, holding it out for Boyd's inspection. The younger boy ran it through his fingers wonderingly. "General Forrest's!" From it he looked to the faded weatherworn hat Drew had left on a chair by the door.

No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch of brown plain, dotted with poppet legs and here and there a whim, across the dull expanse of which Waddy seemed to peer with stupid eyes.

"God makes the milk and the milkman brings it," he said. The Fioretti, if you must needs break a butterfly on your dissecting-board, was written, as I judge, by a bare-foot Minorite of forty; compiled, that is, from the wonderings, the pretty adjustments and naive disquisitions of any such weatherworn brown men as you may see to- day toiling up the Calvary to their Convent.

Almost instantly, those on the fast-receding shore heard from the boat the soft notes of some one in song. Under the conditions, whatever the words and the air, they floated back as many of those left behind had heard the old voyageur take his leave. But this song came from neither of the weatherworn steersmen, nor from the stolid members of their half-breed crew.

The window at which I stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though weatherworn, was still complete. But it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. I drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out. What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms.

The wasted and weatherworn appearance of some of these stones would otherwise indicate a very great age for the structure. With stone of the size used a good face can be formed by simple fracture, and a joint sufficiently close may be made by a few strokes with a stone maul. If finer work was aimed at, it must have been accomplished by rubbing the stones to a face.