"I will always suit you the best I can." I rode to Tiger Hill. Overhead hung a dense mist, like a roof of shadow, perfectly still, wrapping us in damp and frightfully cold vapour. After two hours' ride in the darkness we reached our [Pg 151]destination. Suddenly the cloud fell like a curtain pulled down, the sky appeared, and then the earth at our feet became visible in the starlight. Some vestiges of a temple could be discerned among the grass—the foundations of enormous halls, and still standing in solitude, the brick chimneys in which the devout were wont to burn their prayers, written on rice-paper. Far away, in the transparent air, above a wall of grey cloud—the dull, dingy grey of dirty cotton-wool—a speck showed as a beacon of lilac light, of the hue and form of a cyclamen flower; this turned to rose, to brick-red, to warm gold colour, fading into silver; and then, against the blue sky, showed immaculately white. This was Gaurisankar—Mount Everest—the top of the world, appallingly high, inconceivably vast, though lost in the distance, and seen from a hillock three thousand metres above the sea. Jeff, glancing back, caught Sandy’s nod. “Well, the dinner was being got ready when you sent for us,” remarked the captain. "We had better move off," said the Lieutenant. "They're forming out there to take us in flank, and we can't hold them back. We have done all that we can here, and a mighty good job, too. We have saved a lot of our men and salted a good bagful of rebels. Attention! File left March!" "That's because we've taken 'em and have our own men there," replied Gid Mackall. "It'll all be different when we git ashore and further into the State." Precedent was clearly recognizable, even though it made no sense. Those who had not escaped surely had no reason to be punished, Cadnan thought. But what the masters had done to Great Bend Tree they would do to Bent Line Tree. The tears began to roll down her cheeks, they shone on her face in the moonlight—they fell quite fast as she[Pg 313] walked on gripped against her lover's heart. She was leaning more and more heavily against him, for her strength was ebbing fast—oh, if he would only speak!—she could not walk much further, and yet she dared not rest beside him on that haunted ground. The next day they left Odiam for the recruiting station at Rye. Reuben and the farm-hands watched them as they marched off whistling "Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you," shaking their shoulders in all the delight of their new freedom. They had gone—as Albert had gone, as Robert, as Richard, as Tilly, as Benjamin, as Caro, as Pete had gone. Reuben stood erect and stiff, his eyes following them as they turned out of the drive and disappeared down the Peasmarsh road. "Oh! don't ask me; but go for Master Calverley. For God's sake, do not stand as if you were bewitched: see! see! he is dying. The poor child! What will become of me? Run, Byles, run, for mercy's sake, and tell Master Calverley." HoME激情亚洲动漫ENTER NUMBET 003angangxi.com.cn www.193118.com china165.com.cn tcx.org.cn www.zhuansi-edu.cn www.amqp.org.cn 513111.org.cn cic-fund.org.cn www.df426.com.cn www.ycqedu.com.cn