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Jimmie Dale dressed quickly now. From the pockets of the little leather girdle to the pockets of his tweeds he transferred a steel picklock, a pair of light steel handcuffs, a piece of fine but exceedingly strong cord, a black silk mask, and that small metal case, within which, between sheets of oiled paper, lay those gray-coloured, diamond-shaped, adhesive paper seals that were known in every den in the underworld, known in every police bureau of two continents, as the insignia of the Gray Seal.
They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings.
S. Barbara was originally dedicated to S. Martin, but the name was changed when the altar from the church of S. Barbara was brought here during the Turkish siege of 1537; it is mentioned in 1194. It is the most ancient church in Traù, and the lintel of the door has an inscription upon it with diamond-shaped O's, as used in the eighth century. The ornamental carving also is consistent with that period in its design, with crosses of interlaced work in the centre and at the ends, two griffins with tails entwined in a circle, one on each side of a central feature, with a rosette within a cable moulding, and rough trefoils filling up gaps. The interior has nave and aisles, with four stilted arches resting upon columns on each side, and three apses (of which the central one is larger and longer than the others) with two niches in the wall, covered by a semi-dome on squinches, the plan being square. The caps and columns appear to be antique for the most part, and just outside is a shallow cap of the same pattern as one at Kairouan. The aisles are very narrow, and are vaulted with cross-vaulting without ribs, but with strengthening arches thrown across to the wall. The nave has a barrel vault with pilaster strips running up to the springing of the strengthening arches, which are all round and unmoulded. A moulding with three projecting corbels runs round the base of the apse vault. It is said that there was once a central cupola. The east window still retains a lattice-pierced slab. The church is now a store-house for odds and ends, with a floor halfway up over the western part, but the podest
Once again I understood: all these people had been scraping off little diamond-shaped pieces of red paper pasted on their door-posts; and on these papers were written a number of characters, which proclaimed the adherence of all the inmates to the tenets of the Boxers. In their few weeks' reign, this Chinese sansculottism had succeeded in imposing its will on all.
Then he ran as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one two three of the piles of stones into the dark, sweet-smelling gullies; heard a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave; saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him; saw the current of the Waingunga far below, and a flat, diamond-shaped head in the water; leaped outward with all his strength, the tailless dhole snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and dropped feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and triumphant.
A single glance showed me the cause of his surprise, for on the stiff, putty-like surface, standing out with the sharp distinctness of a wax mould, were the fresh footprints of the man who had just passed, each footprint displaying on its sole the impression of stud-nails arranged in a diamond-shaped pattern, and on its heel a group of similar nails arranged in a cross.
The roads, once you are well away from help, are all pretty much alike, and all bad. And although the white, diamond-shaped signs of a beneficent automobile club are posted here and there, where wrong turnings are most likely to prove disastrous to travelers, Casey Ryan was in the mood to lick any man who pointed out a sign to him.
But, consuming his time in these researches, he remained throughout his whole life more poor than famous; wherefore the sculptor Donatello, who was very much his friend, said to him very often when Paolo showed him mazzocchi with pointed ornaments, and squares drawn in perspective from diverse aspects; spheres with seventy-two diamond-shaped facets, with wood-shavings wound round sticks on each facet; and other fantastic devices on which he spent and wasted his time "Ah, Paolo, this perspective of thine makes thee abandon the substance for the shadow; these are things that are only useful to men who work at the inlaying of wood, seeing that they fill their borders with chips and shavings, with spirals both round and square, and with other similar things."
Old English houses, however, not infrequently contain armorial panels, coats of arms in leaden frames, and curious little pictures in colours which can be hung against modern windows where the light will throw up the rich colouring of the old-time painters. Little patches of colour, too, were often introduced in otherwise plain diamond-shaped lattice panes.
But such announcements had little terror for us by this time, and we found no difficulty in gaining admittance to the quaint little building. It is in the Elizabethan style, with half-timber frame and sagging tile roof. The windows have small, diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass set in rude iron frames and open on a typical English flower garden.
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