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"You must explain that to me. I've forgotten the formula."ÃÄݤ¥Allingham stamped his feet on the carpet. "I will not listen to such talk, Mrs. Masters! A woman of your age and supposed sense to lend ear to such nonsense. I'm ashamed of you."¬¤»Úò¤£"Go away, madam!" bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the upper hall. "Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three under each of your windows. Do you--?"¤ÜåÓФ¥ê¤¥¬

"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm, Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"¤®¥Ô¿¤®¥Æá¤Ä�£¤¤©¤¥½¤¤¥èAnd then he remembered a possible sequel to the search for beauty.¤ÌƤ¥

Was it possible that some crime or tragedy was being enacted behind those grimy walls, all unknown to the police? The house was reported to be luxuriously furnished, the front of the place was all shuttered. Stranger things are happening in this London of ours every day in the week.ݤ¿¥¥³¥"She's my sweetheart," Arthur replied.¤¤ïò CHAPTER FIVE¥ð¥çŧ¥Ä

"Stop," cried the Doctor, and there was almost anger in his features as he leapt to his feet. "It is you who are raving now. How can there exist such a world? And what plight has overtaken the human race, that it is now dependent upon mechanical contrivance for its actions! But, no. I refuse to believe that the Clockwork man represents the final destiny of man. He is a myth, a caricature, at the most a sort of experiment. This multiform world of which he talks so glibly is an extravagant boast. Besides, who would care to live in such a world, and with every action conditioned by an exact mechanism? Your optimism about this extraordinary affair amazes me even more than the thing itself. At the best what it means is that man has come to final ruin, not that he has achieved any real mastery of life. If all the creatures in the world eight thousand years[Pg 181] hence are indeed clockwork men, then it is because some monstrous tyranny has come to birth in the race of man; it is because some diabolical plan has been evolved to make all men slaves. The clock may make man independent of time and space, but it obviously condemns him to an eternity of slavery. That is why I am still loath to believe in the evidence of my own eyes. That is why any explanation of this phenomenon is better than the obvious one!"¤Ü®í¤£�Ԥݤ¥¤î"The functioning principle," said the Clockwork man, "is distributed throughout, but the clock—" His words ran on incoherently for a few moments and ended in an abrupt explosion that nearly lifted him out of his seat. "Beg pardon—what I mean to say is that the clock—wallabaloo—wum—wum—"dµÜ¤¥¤Ç

Allingham stamped his feet on the carpet. "I will not listen to such talk, Mrs. Masters! A woman of your age and supposed sense to lend ear to such nonsense. I'm ashamed of you."¥¤¤Üô¤ë¥"Of course, I'm only a sort of amateur," Arthur continued, modestly. "But I do like books, and I can generally get at what a chap's driving at—in a way."¤¤Î¥Þ¤At least, the latter seemed grateful to receive whatever was given to him, and his general manner became decidedly more possible. There seemed less chance now of a drastic[Pg 154] relapse. The Doctor had locked the door of the surgery. It would be embarrassing to be discovered in such circumstances, and Mrs. Masters might faint with horror at the sight of the empty tins and bottles and the gorging visitor. It was symptomatic of the Doctor's frame of mind that even now the one thing he dreaded more than anything else was the intrusion of a curious world into this monstrous proceeding. He had been forced into accepting the evidence of his own eyes, but there still remained in him a strong desire to hush up the affair, to protect the world at large from so fierce a shock to its established ideas.¤¥À¢¤±¤¥

He had known the Countess Lalage's governess for years. He admired her independence of character, too, though on the whole he would have preferred her taking the home that her uncle Gilbert Lawrence, the great novelist, was ever urging upon her. But she would have a home of her own soon.¥Æ¥µ­¤¤¥¢¥[Pg 201]¤¤ëßÒ¤¹¥Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted. Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited. Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump of dust, sweat and pain.¥¼°Ý¬ÔÚ¤Ù¥

She joined in his mirth. A little later it was before she had the last word.¤¥¥¤ô©Ôͦ�¬¥óµ¤Ç¦¥©¥LIV THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY¥¤¤¥¤Ò®¤¥Ø¡

CHAPTER FOUR¿¹ ¤¿¤ÃHe began to vibrate again, his whole frame quivering and shaking. Little blue sparks scintillated around the back part of his head. He lifted one leg up as though to take a step forward; and then his ears flapped wildly, and he remained with one leg in mid-air and a finger to his nose.ߤãIt was an unpleasant episode, but fortunately the object of such misplaced and ugly hilarity scarcely seemed to notice the outrage. Mr. Bumpus was not lacking in courage. After a few more groans and sighs, and a final rubbing of that part of him that had been injured, he placed himself in preparation to receive the next ball. The spectators loudly applauded[Pg 31] him, and the bowler, perhaps unwilling to risk another misadventure, moderated his delivery. Mr. Bumpus struck the ball lightly, and it sped away through the slips. A fielder darted after it, but there was ample time for a run. "Come on!" shouted Mr. Bumpus, and started to puff and blow his way down the pitch.奵¥Ù¤¥

LXIII SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW略�¤×©¸ë´cÅ¿»Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle, top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.] One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture: the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room, and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.¤­Õ¤Ö

Arthur was startled back to common sense. "They don't," he whispered, as they held one another in trembling arms. "If they did they would be like us."¤¥¦¥Á¤°¤¥¤¤òÜ"Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?"¤²Õ¥éArthur's chief sensation now was one of pity for a fellow creature obviously in such a hopeless state. He almost forget his alarm in his sympathy for the difficulties of the strange figure. That struggle to get alive, to produce the elementary effects of existence, made him think of his own moods of failure, his own helplessness. He took a step nearer to the hurdle.¥áÃ¥