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• "Rather!" Prout grinned. "He's my prisoner. Arrested him tonight in connection with some long firm frauds. I arrested him in his own lodgings so that I should have a chance to search the room, and what did I come across but a few letters written by the murdered man to this brother of his."
• The Clockwork man turned slowly and surveyed the prostrate figure. "A rudimentary race," he soliloquised, with his finger nosewards, "half blind, and painfully restricted in their movements. Evidently they have only a few senses—five at the most." He passed out into the street, carefully avoiding the body.[Pg 103] "They have a certain freedom," he continued, still nursing his nose, "within narrow limits. But they soon grow limp. And when they fall down, or lose balance, they have no choice but to embrace the earth."
• "Get on," the manager said impatiently, "Get on."
• "I said next week," explained the other, "in order to make my meaning clear. Actually, of course, I don't describe time in such arbitrary terms. But when one is in Rome, you know. What I mean to convey is that I am capable of going not only somewhere, but also somewhen."
• THE CLOCK
• "Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in mine; you're afraid to look."
• The Clockwork man sighed, a long, whistling sigh. "I wish you would mend me. I'm all wrong you know. Something has got out of place, I think. My clock won't work properly."
• "And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cécile, with her Creole accent.
• He counted out forty ￡5 Bank of England notes on the table with a hand that trembled strangely. He seemed restless and eager to be away now, as if fearful that Bruce might change his mind. The whole thing might have been a dream save for the crisp crackling notes on the table.
• Whatever inconveniences the Clockwork man suffered as a result of having lapsed into a world of strange laws and manifestations, he enjoyed at least one advantage. His power of travelling over the earth at an enormous speed rendered the question of pursuit almost farcical. While Allingham's car sped over the neighbouring hills, the object of the chase returned by a circuitous route to Great Wymering, slowed down, and began to walk up and down the High Street. It was now quite dark, and very few people seemed to have noticed that odd figure ambling along, stopping now and again to examine some object that aroused his interest or got in his way. There is no doubt that during these lesser perambulations he contrived somehow to get the silencer under better control, so that his progress was now muted. It is possible also that his faculties began to adjust themselves a little to his strange surroundings, and that he now definitely tried to grasp his[Pg 85] environment. But he still suffered relapses. And the fact that he again wore a hat and wig, although not his own, requires a word of explanation.
• This failure of laws to regulate apprenticeship, which facts fully warrant us in assuming, is due in a large degree to the impossibility of applying general rules to special cases; it may be attributed to the same reasons which make it useless to fix values or the conditions of exchange by legislation. What is required is that the master, the apprentice, and the public should understand the true relations between them—the value of what is given and what is received on both sides. When this is understood, the whole matter will regulate itself without any interference on the part of the law.
• "In here there is a lady, ill," we heard Miss Harper say.
• "You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.
• "You must understand," resumed the Clockwork man, making a rather painful effort to fold his arms and look natural, "you must understand—click—click—that it is difficult for me to carry on conversation in this manner. Not only are my speech centres rather disordered—G-r-r-r-r-r-r—but I am not really accustomed to expressing my thoughts[Pg 143] in this way (here there was a loud spinning noise, like a sewing machine, and rising to a rapid crescendo). My brain is—so—constituted that action—except in a multiform world—is bound to be somewhat spasmodic—Pfft—Pfft—Pfft. In fact—Pfft—it is only—Pfft—because I am in such a hope—hope—hopeless condition that I am able to converse with you at all."
• "I beg your pardon," said the Clockwork man, suddenly becoming conscious of the hirsute development. "Irregular growth—most inconvenient—it's due to my condition—I'm all to pieces, you know—things happen spontaneously." He appeared to be struggling hard to reverse some process within himself, but the beard continued to grow.
• There was a long, long silence, a silence that could be felt.
• Boring may be divided into three operations as follows: chuck-boring on lathes; bar-boring, when a boring bar runs on points or centres, and is supported at the ends only; and bar-boring when a bar is supported in and fed through fixed bearings. The principles are different in these operations, each one being applicable to certain kinds of work. A workman who can distinguish between these plans of boring, and can always determine from the nature of a certain work which is the best to adopt, has acquired considerable knowledge of fitting operations.
• "No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third person,--"
• "Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go twenty-three miles more by midnight?"
• The cry that rose to her lips was stifled, a firm hand grasped her arm, another was laid tightly over her mouth.
• He glanced up at her photograph on the mantelpiece. If there was a flaw in the composition of her fair, Saxon beauty, it was that the mouth was a little too large and opened rather too easily, disclosing teeth that were not as regular as they should be. But nature's blunder often sets the seal on man's choice, and to the Doctor this trifling fault gave warmth and vivacity to a face that might easily have been cold and impassive, especially as her eyes were steel blue and she had no great art in the use of them. Her voice, too, often startled the listener by its occasional note that[Pg 125] suggested an excitability of temperament barely under control.
• Outside was the clatter of hoofs and the jingle of harness. The hall door stood open; Balmayne politely helped Maitrank on with his heavy coat. Hetty, standing in the background, began to wonder if she was dreaming.
• "Gawd," he gasped, "it's a blooming ghost."
• CHAPTER XX. "UNEASY LIES THE HEAD."
• These four types comprehend the motive-power in general use at the present day. In considering different engines for motive-power in a way to best comprehend their nature, the first view to be taken is that they are all directed to the same end, and all deal with the same power; and in this way avoid, if possible, the impression of there being different kinds of power, as the terms water-power, steam-power, and so on, seem to imply. We speak of steam-power, water-power, or wind-power; but power is the same from whatever source derived, and these distinctions merely indicate different natural sources from which power is derived, or the different means employed to utilise and apply it.
• "You know perfectly well," she replied.
• And then there was the Clockwork man—something else to think about, to be wondered at.
• The Clockwork man shook his head slowly from side to side. "No children. No love—nothing but going on for ever, spinning in infinite space and knowledge."
• The inquest was sensational from the very start. After the dead man's landlady of the house by the docks and her landlord's agent proved the handwriting of the deceased, Sergeant Prout told the story of the missing banknotes. A good few of the packed audience knew Bruce by sight, and as the evidence proceeded he found the scrutiny of so many eyes quite trying.
• "I cannot stay here," he cried. "That woman maddens me. It brings back all the recollections that I am trying to forget. I shall forget myself----"
• "At the present moment I could not swear to my own," Bruce said helplessly.
• "Indeed, he has, Mr. Prout," Leona said coolly. "Will you come in? We have been having a pleasant conversation with some pleasing confessions. Have you come for me?"
• "Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"
• A LITERARY STUDENT. A LITERARY STUDENT.
• The traction of belts upon pulleys, like that of locomotive wheels upon railways, being incapable of demonstration except by actual experience, for a long time hindered the introduction of belts as a means of transmitting motion and power except in cases when gearing or shafts could not be employed. Motion is named separately, because with many kinds of machinery that are driven at high speed—such as wood machines—the transmission of rapid movement must be considered as well as power, and in ordinary practice it is only by means of belts that such high speeds may be communicated from one shaft to another.
• "Because," said Gregg, purposely adopting a monotonous drawl as though to conceal his eagerness, "if my theory is correct, then I assume that the Clockwork man comes from the future."
• I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.
• There was a certain amount of applause, followed by an embarrassing silence. Presently someone threw another ball out into the field, and the game was resumed. But the Clockwork man treated Tanner's next delivery, which was a fast one, in exactly the same manner. Again nobody could say exactly what happened—for the action was swifter than the quickest eye could follow—but the ball disappeared[Pg 27] again, this time in the direction of a fringe of poplars far away on the horizon. Again there was a lull, but the applause this time was modified. Another ball was supplied, and this also was dispatched with equal force and in a third direction, almost unanimously decided by the now bewildered spectators to be the flagstaff of the church that stood in the middle of the High Street, Great Wymering.
• I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw! haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a three-days acquaintance! It beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
• But the Clockwork man paid not the slightest heed to the command. He remained, statuesque, a figure of gross indifference. Mr. Bumpus pulled himself up sharply, mid-way between the two wickets; his red face was a study in bewilderment. He slid a few paces, cast one imploring glance in the direction of the Clockwork man, and then rushed desperately back to his own crease. But he was too late; his wicket had been put down.
• "But you must admit," interpolated the Doctor, "that I might be deceiving you. I could easily do it, just to prove you in the wrong. I can assure you that nothing would suit my humour better at the present moment! Instead of which it is I who appear the fool. I never wanted to believe in the Clockwork man. I was angry with you for believing in him. Admit that it would be a just revenge on my part to hoax you."
• It had come at last. Bruce braced himself for the ordeal. Just for the moment there was a terrible temptation to hold his tongue. The story of his visit to the corner house was known to those only who would not dare to speak. Once he told the truth he realized that he was putting a noose around his neck.
• Prout glanced admiringly into the pretty flushed face.
• "I'm at No. 1, Lytton Avenue," she said, "Countess Lalage's, you know. Yes, I am quite aware of the fact that it is an empty house. But there is a lot of stuff here that is worth fetching. In fact, there is somebody in the dining-room now. Are you going to do anything, or shall I give the alarm?"
• "I won't have him," the Doctor's voice broke out again, and there was a kind of sob in it, "I won't have the Clockwork man at any[Pg 186] price. Every nerve in my body cries out against him. He is the scandal of the ages. He must be hushed up, hidden—forgotten."
• "But how can you explain him?" protested the Doctor, with some trace of his old irritation. "You have not even seen the clock."
• However large the crowd, it was silent as death when the priest Jacobs addressed them. He spoke words of encouragement, hope, and confidence, and urged them to send up their prayers to God Almighty—prayers for peace. When he had ended, these thousands sang the "Hymn to Mary," in18 such perfect order as if only one superhuman body sent forth an immensely powerful sound from earth to Heaven.
• That the Clockwork man was likely to prove a source of embarrassment to him in more ways than one was demonstrated to the Doctor almost as soon as they entered the house. Mrs. Masters, who was laying the supper, regarded the visitor with a slight huffiness. He obtruded upon her vision as an extra meal for which she was not prepared. And the Doctor's manner was not reassuring. He seemed, for the time being, to lack that urbanity which usually enabled him to smooth over the awkward situations in life. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that he should have allowed Mrs. Masters to develop an attitude of distrust, but he was[Pg 136] nervous, and that was sufficient to put the good lady on her guard.
• "The detective was sharp enough to get you here," Prout said.
• "I will show you where she is," he said hoarsely.
• I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?" I asked.
• "I got home sooner than expected, got home in time to find my wife dead and that fatal letter in her hand. The woman who was the cause of all the mischief entered the room just too late to get the letter back. She was off her guard for the instant, and I saw it all in a flash. The part about the jewels I got later from one of the servants who had been afraid to speak before.
• Noting the causes and conditions which have led to this perfection in machine-tool manufacture, and how far they apply in the case of other classes of machinery, will in a measure indicate the probable improvements and changes that the future will produce.
• In making up the time charged to different machines during their construction, a good plan is to supply each workman with a slate and pencil, on which he can enter his time as so many hours or fractions of hours charged to the respective symbols. Instead of interfering with his time, this will increase a workman's interest in what he is doing, and naturally lead to a desire to diminish the time charged to the various symbols. This system leads to emulation among workmen where any operation is repeated by different persons, and creates an interest in classification which workmen will willingly assist in.
• Fifth.—The range and power of the blows, as well as the time in which they are delivered, is controlled at will; this constitutes the greatest distinction between steam and other hammers, and the particular advantage which has led to their extended use.
• "Come along then," she said gaily. "I know I am a bad mother."
• "Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes! Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
• The End
• He cally flag wit'h chop so nice—
• "Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a soldier of the cross?'"
• After that final collapse, the Doctor had succeeded somehow in restoring him to his normal shape; and then, by miraculous chance, he discovered a hand that, when turned, had[Pg 168] the effect of producing in the Clockwork man an appearance of complete quiescence. He looked now more like a tailor's dummy than anything else; and the apparent absence of blood circulation and even respiration rendered the illusion almost perfect. He looked life-like without seeming to be alive.
• "What on earth are you talking about?" Charlton asked impatiently.
• The End
• "No you don't," said Lawrence coolly. "Of course, it would be a very dramatic finish to the night's adventure, but I can't permit it. Go easy."
• "Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
• "No you don't," said Lawrence coolly. "Of course, it would be a very dramatic finish to the night's adventure, but I can't permit it. Go easy."
• "Knowledge is power," said Lawrence, "so long as you keep it to yourself. Why did you tell me that you had never heard of the tuberose perfume?"
• The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.
• She flashed along the hall. Directly she was gone Lawrence signalled to Maitrank, who stood in the background. The latter produced a letter which he handed to the foremost of the two intruders.
• He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I to help you to help him; help him to do what?"
• "It's very hard," the Curate complained, "that my infirmity should have prevented me from seeing more. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak."
• We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive, bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cécile drew his head down and showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
• The Clockwork man was standing by his side, a comic expression of pity and misgiving animating his crude features. With one hand he was softly stroking the damaged bonnet of the car.
• Wind-wheels or pneumatic engines.
• XXXI THE RED STAR'S WARNING
• The soda water hissed and bubbled in the long glass. Leona raised it to her lips and drained it to the last drop. A little splash of colour crept into her scarred cheek, she drew a long, shuddering sigh.
• The little man struggled silently, furiously.
• Besides the machine tools named, there are special machines to be found in most works, machines directed to the performance of certain work; by a particular adaptation such machines are rendered more effective, but they are by such adaptation unfitted for general purposes.
• CHAPTER I. PLANS OF STUDYING.
• "Of course, there was no face there," Balmayne flared out. "That's the worst of doing this kind of thing with a woman--one never knows when she's going to have an attack of nerves. The idea of Charlton standing at the window and knowing what we are going to do is too good. Pull yourself together."
• "Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General, is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of you will ever say how you learned it."
• "Yes? Well, I think that's good."
• "Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"
• There was further delay. The bowler at the other end objected to the position of the Clockwork man. He argued, reasonably enough, that the non-participating batsman ought to stand quite clear of the wicket. The umpire had to be consulted, and, as a result of his decision, the Clockwork man was gently but firmly induced to move further away. He then remained, in the same attitude, at the extreme edge of the crease. His obtuseness was certainly remarkable, and comment among the spectators now became general and a trifle heated.
• "If Captain Jewett will only go on to union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn will see that he never gets back."
• I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me, testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me, three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."
• "She was yesterday," he stammered.
• "Will you have the goodness to look at these," he asked.
• For the life of him Bruce could not say. It was absurd to suppose that by some mistake the Bank of England had issued two sets of notes of the same series of numbers. There was no mistake about the murdered man's letter either.
• "Yes," echoed Gregg enthusiastically, "a multiform world. A world in which man moves as he will, grows as he will, behaves in every way exactly as he wills. A world set free! Think of what it means!"
• "I wonder," said the Curate, grasping the edge of his chair, "I wonder, now, if Moses felt like this when he saw the burning bush."
• I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven, politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
• Thus Maitrank chuckled over his invitation. He was going to take his vengeance for the trick played on him in his own good time. He had purposely kept out of the way of the Countess. He set the cables in motion, and after a due response or two he was closeted with the head of, a smart firm of lawyers in Ely Place.
• Pushing his companion into the surgery, the Doctor commenced opening tins for all he was worth. The process calmed him, and he had time to think a little. For half an hour he opened tins, and passed them over to the Clockwork man, without noticing very much what the latter did with them. Then he went on to bottles containing patent foods, phosphates, hypophosphates, glycero-hypophosphates, all the phosphates in fact, combined with malt or other substances, which might be considered almost necessary as an auxiliary diet for the Clockwork man.
• A moment later and Balmayne was up again. Leona Lalage looked at him enquiringly. He had no breath to speak. With gleaming eyes Balmayne held two rusty old cases over his head. Leona grasped the motor lamp, and Balmayne forced back the clasps of the cases.
• Strains caused by cutting action, in planing or other machines, fall within and are resisted by the framing; even when the tools are supported by one frame and the material by another, such frames have to be connected by means of foundations which become a constituent part of the framing in such cases.
• Lawrence chuckled to himself with the air of a man who has a joke which is too good for the world in general. Isidore was puzzled and interested.
• "Just a moment," Leona said eagerly. "Suppose I deny that. How are you going to prove that I did so?"
• So it came about that the Doctor's final action was hurried and ill-considered. It seemed to him that he must have committed some kind of assault upon the mechanism. Actually, he succeeded in pressing the knob[Pg 163] marked XI, and the immediate result was a sort of muffled ringing sound arising from somewhere in the depths of the Clockwork man's organism.
• "Of course not," rapped out the Clockwork man, "I'm only an invention."
• That the book was not published sooner is because I could not foresee more than others how terribly long the war would last; and I should have preferred to wait till the end in order to insert several reports which I know are being kept in the occupied part, in order to acquaint the whole world with the full truth about the behaviour of the Germans. As long as the Germans keep the upper hand in Belgium, such a publication cannot take place without danger to several persons.
• "The Chinese are great believers in fortune-telling, and even the most intelligent of them are often calling upon the necromancers to do something for them. They rarely undertake any business without first ascertaining if the signs are favorable; and if they are not, they will decline to have anything to do with it. When a merchant has a cargo of goods on its way, he is very likely to ask a fortune-teller how the thing is to turn out; and if the latter says it is all right, he gets liberally paid for his information. But in spite of their superstition, the Chinese are very shrewd merchants, and can calculate their profits with great accuracy.
• "And what can I do for you?" he asked.
• "In a matter like this," put in Gregg, "sense is at a premium. What we have to do is to consult our intuitions."
• "Not by any means," was the reply; "thousands of them are not able to speak a word when they go abroad, but they gradually pick up the language of the country to which they go. Not all of them go to America or other English-speaking lands; many have gone to Cuba, Peru, and Brazil, where there was no need of a knowledge of English. Spanish and Portuguese are the only tongues in use there, and many an emigrant never took the trouble to learn a word of them."
• "You don't play," she said. "What interest is there to you?"
• The morning after the above conversation the steamer arrived at Hong-kong, and dropped anchor in the harbor. She was immediately surrounded by a fleet of small boats, which competed eagerly among[Pg 401] themselves for the patronage of the passengers. Our friends selected one which was rowed by a couple of women, and had a group of children in a little pen at the stern. Doctor Bronson explained to the boys that in Southern China a great deal of the boating is done by women, and that entire families live on board the little craft on which they earn their existence. The boat population of Canton numbers more than sixty thousand persons. They are not allowed to live on shore, and their whole lives, from birth to death, are passed on the water. The most of the boatmen and boatwomen at Hong-kong come from Canton, which is only ninety miles away; and as they have privileges at the former place which are denied them in the latter, they are quite satisfied to stay where they are.
• "The Spaniard with the mantilla," Lawrence whispered, "the evil genius of the house. We shall see something more presently. Not that we are going to interfere. On the whole, I rather want these people to get the jewels."
• Or, more briefly stated—
• "And you want to get home," Balmayne cried. "Pardon me. I will go and see if they are ready for you."
• The story was told at length, Charlton listening with a certain amount of interest. He looked like a man under the cloud of a great sorrow, the contemplation of which was never far from his eyes.
• "I see," the Clockwork man nodded sagely. "But they wouldn't be any use to me. What I need is adjustment, regulation." He looked hard at the doctor, with a pathetic expression of enquiry. "My clock—" he began, and stopped abruptly.
• "Well?" Lalage burst out, furiously. "Why don't you speak; what have you got to say before I put the knife into your heart?"
• "And you want to get home," Balmayne cried. "Pardon me. I will go and see if they are ready for you."
• It was good to be with him there, to feel the pressure of his hand, and to look into his keen, resolute face. With Gordon by her side Hetty felt equal to meeting any terrors. Yet after the lapse of a few hours the whole thing seemed so vague and intangible that she hesitated to speak.
• "Then how did I get back again?" he asked.
• Gregg placed a hand soothingly upon his friend's shoulder. "Why didn't you send for me before? You're over-strung. This experience has been too much for you."
• "You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are purged out of the land."
• Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
• There was a certain amount of applause, followed by an embarrassing silence. Presently someone threw another ball out into the field, and the game was resumed. But the Clockwork man treated Tanner's next delivery, which was a fast one, in exactly the same manner. Again nobody could say exactly what happened—for the action was swifter than the quickest eye could follow—but the ball disappeared[Pg 27] again, this time in the direction of a fringe of poplars far away on the horizon. Again there was a lull, but the applause this time was modified. Another ball was supplied, and this also was dispatched with equal force and in a third direction, almost unanimously decided by the now bewildered spectators to be the flagstaff of the church that stood in the middle of the High Street, Great Wymering.
• "She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe, at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told her what he was, "And you know what that is."
• Lawrence dropped "The Star" and gazed at the speaker with absolute amazement.
• "We passed several men who had small establishments for gambling, not unlike some that are known in America. There was one with a revolving pointer on the top of a horizontal table that was divided into sections with different marks and numbers. The pointer had a string, hanging down from one end, and the way they made the machine work was to whirl the pointer, and see where the string hung when it stopped. The game appeared to be very fair, as the man who paid his money had the chance of whirling the pointer, and he might do his own guessing as to where it would stop. If he was right, he would win eight times as much money as he had wagered, since the board was divided into eight spaces. If he was wrong, he lost all that he put down, and was obliged to go away or try his luck again. The temptation to natives seems to be very great, since they are constantly gambling, and sometimes lose all the money they have. Gambling is so great a vice in China that a good many of its forms have been forbidden by the government.[Pg 380] The case is not unusual of a man losing everything he possesses, even to his wife and children, and then being thrown naked into the streets by the proprietor of the place where he has lost his money.
• CHAPTER VIII. PAUL PROUT.
• "Because my desperate woman hides by the scene of her crime. I was a little dubious about you because that comes out in my plot. Perhaps you counted upon that, and the fact I should not look for you here, after all. It was a game of subtle cross-purposes. But I did look for you here, and I found you. It is a rather long story that I have had to tell, but it has been necessary. And if I repeated it in a court of law I am afraid it would cause you serious inconvenience."
• It occurred to the Doctor that here was an opportunity to investigate certain matters.
• "Never rains but it pours," Bruce smiled as he thrust the notes in his breast pocket. "Tomorrow every penny goes for that wonderful lot of old furniture in Tottenham Court Road. What a pleasant surprise for Hetty!"
• II LIEUTENANT FERRY
• Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket.
• "I was quite certain of the fact when I looked for it. And all the time this Corner House tragedy was being enacted exactly as I should have written it. There were other complications, of course, but the plot was the same."
• LIX UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW
• "Dr. Bruce has been, miss," nurse remarked. "He says Miss Mamie is not to be left alone. The Countess was to be told that."
• 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.
• The object that the Doctor picked up from the floor was an oblong-shaped piece of metal, almost as thin as paper, and slightly bluish in colour. Upon its surface, printed in red embossed letters, was the following matter:—
• In regard to shaded elevations, it may be said that photography has superseded them for the purpose of illustrating completed machines, and but few establishments care to incur the expense of ink-shaded elevations. Shaded elevations cannot be made with various degrees of care, and in a longer or shorter time; there is but one standard for them, and that is that such drawings should be made with great care and skill. Imperfect shaded elevations, although they may surprise and please the unskilled, are execrable in the eyes of a draughtsman or an engineer; and as the making of shaded elevations can be of but little assistance to an apprentice draughtsman, it is better to save the time that must be spent in order to make such drawings, and apply the same study and time to other matters of greater importance.
• "Little girl?"
• NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
• I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same. Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters, hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any separate soul."
• "You must try and pull yourself together," he said. "There has been an amazing piece of luck. Isidore was dining at the Lotus with Lawrence. We came down the steps together. There was a fire close by, and a hansom backed on to the pavement. To make a long story short, Isidore fainted with the pain of a broken collarbone, and they took him to Charing Cross Hospital."
• Hetty darted up the secondary staircase intent only on her little charge. The child was unusually nervous and imaginative, as if she had been frightened by the ghost stories of a foolish nurse. Alternatively her mother's pet and encumbrance, Mamie had been driven back upon herself. And she had given up all the love of her heart to Hetty.
• "Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "'twill not be hard; we are not going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations, and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah, idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words with his quiet intensity.
• The sudden and varied resistance to line shafts tends to loosen couplings, destroy gearing, and produce sudden strains that are unknown in other cases; and shafting arranged with the usual proportions for transmitting power will soon fail if applied to driving trip-hammers. Rigid connections or metal attachments ace impracticable, and a slipping belt arranged so as to have the tension varied at will is the usual and almost the only successful means of transmitting power to hammers. The motion of trip-hammers is a curious problem; a head and die weighing, together with the irons for attaching them, one hundred pounds, will, with a helve eight feet long, strike from two to three hundred blows a minute. This speed exceeds anything that could be attained by a direct reciprocal motion given to the hammer-head by a crank, and far exceeds any rate of speed that would be assumed from theoretical inference. The hammer-helve being of wood, is elastic, and acts like a vibrating spring, its vibrations keeping in unison with the speed of the tripping points. The whole machine, in fact, must be constructed upon a principle of elasticity throughout, and in this regard stands as an exception to almost every other known machine. The framing for supporting the trunnions, which one without experience would suppose should be very rigid and solid, is found to answer best when composed of timber, and still better when this timber is laid up in a manner that allows the structure to spring and [107] yield. Starting at the dies, and following back through the details of a trip-hammer to the driving power, the apprentice may note how many parts contribute to this principle of elasticity: First—the wooden helve, both in front of and behind the trunnion; next—the trunnion bar, which is usually a flat section mounted on pivot points; third—the elasticity of the framing called the 'husk,' and finally the frictional belt. This will convey an idea of the elasticity required in connecting the hammer-head with the driving power, a matter to be borne in mind, as it will be again referred to.
• "Have you made any new discoveries?" he asked.
• "Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman hurt." The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor. "You did that by intention! Give me that key!" He tried the lock. "We've jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it; now!"--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.
• As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her, and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the pillow--empty!
• "If you open the lid," explained the Clockwork man (and at the sound of that human[Pg 162] voice the doctor jumped violently), "you will see certain stops, marked with numbers."
• "You mean that you have a clue, sir."
• "Right as usual, Mr. Lawrence," said Prout, beaming approvingly on the great novelist. "Why don't you come and join the force?"
• "Incorrigible man," said Mrs. Masters. But the Doctor had turned his back upon her, unwilling to reveal the sudden change in his features. Even as he spoke those light words, there came to him the reflection that he did not really mean them, and his pose seemed to crumble to dust. He had lived up to these nothings for years, but now he knew that they were nothings. As though to crown the irritations of a trying day, there came to him the conviction that his whole life had been an affair of studied gestures, of meticulous gesticulations.
• "A strange place to meet," he said, "but we have met at last."
• Shop system may also be classed as a branch of engineering work; it relates to the classification of machines and their parts by symbols and numbers, to records of weight, the expense of cast, forged, and finished parts, and apportions the cost of finished machinery among the different departments. Shop system also includes the maintenance of standard dimensions, the classification and cost of labour, with other matters that partake both of a mechanical and a commercial nature.
• "Not at all! If you step outside, you can see them standing, ten minutes from here. Near Lixhe they threw a bridge across the Meuse. It is the third already which they put down, for each time they are smashed from the fort. Oh, it is horrible; there must surely fall a number of dead, and here we have seen corpses in the Meuse already.... But I do not understand how you ventured to come here...."
• Machinery of transportation.
• The Doctor paused in his walk and took hold of her elbows. "Does that mean that you've been playing with me all this time?"
• Bruce put the whole thing resolutely out of his mind, and went to bed. It was not till after luncheon that he found time to see Lawrence, to whom he told Hetty's story and the strange scene he had witnessed the night before.
• CHAPTER IX. THE MISSING NOTES.
• CHAPTER XX. GENERALISATION OF SHOP PROCESSES.
• I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out; there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms. Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what I've asked?"
• Even the most guilty when brought to book are not without some feeling of shame, however defiant they may appear, but it is a horrible thing when the innocent has to stand and answer to a criminal charge. A wave of indignation passed over Bruce, to be followed by utter helplessness.
• "No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
• It was all so simple and natural that Leona Lalage could say nothing for a moment. The stranger was standing up searching his pockets wildly. His eyes gleamed with hatred and defeat and baffled avarice. He knew that he had been made the victim of some trick, but there was no name for it yet.
• "Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces' cries.
• Boring may be called internal turning, differing from external turning, because of the tools performing the cutting movement, and in the cut being made on concave instead of convex surfaces; otherwise there is a close analogy between the operations of turning and boring. Boring is to some extent performed on lathes, either with boring bars or by what is termed chuck-boring, in the latter the material is revolved and the tools are stationary.
• Maskee snow, maskee ice;
• "The streets are not at all dirty, and in this respect are vastly different from those of any other city we have seen in China. The authorities evidently pay some attention to keeping them clean and preventing the accumulation of dirt. The fronts of many shops are fully open to the street, and the merchants know how to arrange their wares in the most tempting manner. You see lots of pretty things, and are constantly tempted to buy, and it was very well for us that we agreed not to buy anything till the last day, which we were to devote to shopping.
• An interesting example in the use of belts for communicating power to movable machinery is furnished by the travelling cranes of Mr Ramsbottom, in the shops of the L. & N. W. Railway, at Crewe, England, where powerful travelling cranes receive both the lifting and traversing power by means of a cotton rope not more than three-fourths of an inch in diameter, which moves at a high velocity, the motion being reduced by means of tangent wheels and gearing to attain the force required in lifting heavy loads. Observing the operation of this machinery, a person not familiar with the relations between force and motion will be astonished at the effect produced by the small rope which communicates power to the machinery.
• "I'm so glad you have come at last," he began, in a strong whisper, "I was beginning to be afraid you were going to disappoint us."
• The white look did not even vanish when Hetty spoke of her previous night's adventure.
• He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command. "Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels, while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it. At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby. Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
• John Buchan.
• Suddenly, with a violent effort involving two sharp flappings of his ears, the Clockwork man mastered his difficulty. He appeared to set in action some swift depilatory process. The beard vanished as if by magic. The doctor collapsed into a chair.
• "You see, I have found something out," he said. "I rather hoped--indeed, I have still hopes--that the culprit----"
• "I should like to know what you make of them," said Lawrence.
• XVI AN ACHING CONSCIENCE
• Hetty hesitated. It seemed hardly fair. And yet so much might depend upon her speaking. Nothing could save the Countess from arrest now. Rapidly, but clearly, she told Prout all that there was to tell.
• "And I am afraid I betrayed the fact," Bruce admitted. "I might have thought of some other way of accounting for my presence here. Still, that rather piratical-looking young man seemed to think you had done right. What's this about some man picked up in the garden?"
• A quarter of an hour passed, and then a trim maid with dark short hair, and in the smart starched style peculiar to good servants, appeared. She gave one glance of indifference at Prout, and then passed down the stairs. From his window he could see the very neat figure crossing the square.
• "I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive heard her.
• Pencil-work is indeed the main operation, the inking being merely to give distinctness and permanency to the lines. The main thing in pencilling is accuracy of dimensions and stopping the lines where they should terminate without crossing others. The best pencils only are suitable for draughting; if the plumbago is not of the best quality, the points require to be continually sharpened, and the pencil is worn away at a rate that more than makes up the difference in cost between the finer and cheaper grades of pencils, to say nothing of the effect upon a drawing.
• "Does your father think so, too?"
• The Doctor scarcely heard this. He had[Pg 134] turned aside and stooped down in order to rewind the engine of his car. When he looked up again he beheld an extraordinary sight.
• "So I was," said Allingham, aiming a pad at the opposite wall. "So I was. Never felt more like it in my life. And then some idiot goes and sticks himself right over the top of the sheet. An escaped lunatic. A chap with a lot of extra arms and legs. You never saw anything like it in your life!"
• "Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
• V EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY
• I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines. Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
• "Only tell me," Hetty exclaimed. "Poor woman! What is the address?"
• Hetty had nothing to say. She was tired and worn out, and the cool contempt of her employer was galling. The Countess came into her bedroom presently; all her coldness had gone. She was the winning, gracious woman now as the world knew her. She had a little medicine glass in her hand.
• Arrangement comes next; in this the first matter to be considered is convenience of manipulation. The cutting position should be so arranged as to admit of an easy inspection of the work. An operator having to keep his hand on the adjusting or feed mechanism, which is about twelve inches above the work, it follows that if the cutting level is four feet from the floor, and the feed handle five feet from the floor, the arrangement will be convenient for a standing position. As the work requires continual inspection and hand adjustments, it will for this reason be a proper arrangement to overhang both the supports for the rack and the cutting tools, placing them, as we may say, outside the machine, to secure convenience of access and to allow of inspection. [156] The position of the cutting bar, crank, connections, gearing, pulleys, and shafts, will assume their respective places from obvious conditions, mainly from the position of the operator and the work.
• A quarter of an hour passed, and then a trim maid with dark short hair, and in the smart starched style peculiar to good servants, appeared. She gave one glance of indifference at Prout, and then passed down the stairs. From his window he could see the very neat figure crossing the square.
• Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time, another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops. "Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
• "We don't know positively whether there are a million people in Canton or not. We took the figures from the guide-book, just as everybody[Pg 410] else takes them, and we want to acknowledge our indebtedness to it. The guide-book is very useful in a strange country, as it tells you in a few minutes what you might spend hours or days in learning. It gives you an outline which you must fill in for yourself by practical observation; and[Pg 411] unless you have it with you, there is a great deal that you may miss, if your time is limited, and you are compelled to do your sight-seeing rapidly.
• As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart; the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes. Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cécile and the remaining doctor, she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to sleep, mother."
• "Evidently they took plenty of room when they laid it out," said Frank, "for it isn't crowded like Shanghai and the other places we have seen."
• She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any one in heaven or earth except each other!"
• "Mr. Gholson, can you tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books, thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
• "I don't quite follow you," interjected Allingham.
• "About your money, Herr Maitrank?"
• "I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
• "There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of couriers. And yonder came the sun.
• The story of the coolie-trade and some of the conversation that followed cleared the mystery that surrounded the narrator and had given him the name by which he was known. He had been an active participant in the peculiar commerce of the East, which includes the violation of laws whenever they prove inconvenient, such as the smuggling of opium and the shipment of coolies to the countries where they are in demand. His latest venture was one that required considerable secrecy, as it involved the purchase of arms for the rebels in Japan. For this reason he had been very cautious in his movements around Yokohama and during his whole stay in Japan, and he had found it judicious to leave the country on the vessel that came so near being wrecked in the typhoon that overtook our friends. He was safely away from Japan now, and the arms that he had purchased for the rebels were in the hands of the government. He had made money by the operation, and was on the lookout for something new.
• "Object to what?"
• They were facing one another now. The doctor swallowed hard several times, and he felt the blood tingling in his temples. The dreaded moment had come. He had got to see this strange instrument that distinguished the Clockwork man from ordinary mortals. There was no shrinking from the eerie experience. Underneath that borrowed hat and wig there was something—something utterly strange and outside the pale of human ingenuity. In the name of common humanity it was incumbent upon the Doctor to face the shock of this revelation, and yet he shrunk from it like a frightened child. He felt no[Pg 160] trace of curiosity, no feverish anxiety to investigate this mystery of the future. His knees trembled violently. He did not want to see the clock. He would have given a hundred pounds to be spared the ordeal before him.
• "Begone!" she cried. "Go, before I do you mischief. See, I help you on with your coat. Now go, and don't let me see that ugly yellow face of yours for a fortnight."
• He counted out forty ￡5 Bank of England notes on the table with a hand that trembled strangely. He seemed restless and eager to be away now, as if fearful that Bruce might change his mind. The whole thing might have been a dream save for the crisp crackling notes on the table.
• I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an endless time before he exclaimed at last "My God! Dick, you should have told me."
• Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one, but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it is white, but in love it is red.
• Hetty glanced fearfully around her. Nobody was near--only the palms and the scented roses could hear her confidences.
• "Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
• How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to gain an instant for invention.
• Slowly, with his customary stiffness of movement, the Clockwork man raised his arms upwards and removed the soft clerical hat. He held it aloft, as though uncertain what to do with it, and the Doctor took it from him with a shaking hand.
• "That is like a breath of old times," he growled, as he finished the flask. "Let me light a cigarette and then we'll talk again. I am going to try you high, dear lady. I am going to test your story."
• "Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms. "But, madam! if a man abandons his wife--"
• The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers' guardian on their way.
• There was something about the corner house mystery that gripped the public imagination. There was about it both the realism and the romance that always go to make up a popular sensation.
• "Fiddlesticks! You are the victim of a vile conspiracy, my dear fellow, if ever there was one. Now let me go on with my visions. The motor is an unusually silent one, and it was painted a dull, lustreless black."
• But the Clockwork man made no reply. He was evidently absorbed in the effort to restart some process in himself. Presently his foot went down on the pavement with a smart bang. There followed a succession of sharp explosions, and the next second he glided smoothly away.
• The Doctor found the hand and tried to twist it very slowly and carefully. He had expected the thin piece of metal to resist his touch; but it swung round with a fatal facility—five and a half times!
• Judged upon theoretical grounds, and leaving out the mechanical conditions of operation, it would at once be conceded that a proper plan would be to move the lightest body; that is, if the tools and their attachments were heavier than the material to be acted upon, then the material should be moved for the cutting action, and vice versa. But in practice there are other conditions to be considered more important than a question of the relative weight of reciprocating parts; and it must be remembered that in solving any problem pertaining to machine action, the conditions of operation are to be considered first and have precedence over problems of strain, arrangement, or even the general principles of construction; that is, the conditions of operating must form a base from which proportions, arrangements, and so on, must be deduced. A standard planing machine, such as is employed for most kinds of work, is arranged with a running platen or carriage upon which the material is fastened and traversed beneath the cutting tools. [130] The uniformity of arrangement and design in machines of this kind in all countries wherever they are made, must lead to the conclusion that there are substantial reasons for employing running platens instead of giving a cutting movement to the tools.
• And yet, a slight alteration in man's perceptive organs and that wide blue shell might shatter and disclose a thousand new forms, like fantastic cities shaped in the clouds at sunset. Physiologists claimed that the addition of a single lobe to the human brain might mean that man would know the future as well as the past. What if that miracle had been performed? By such means man might have come to know not only the future, but other dimensions as yet unnamed or merely sketched out by the mathematician in brief, arbitrary terms.
• On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly, locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In the same slow beat he shook his head.
• Charlton rose; the woman's coolness and nerve were inflammable to him.
• The took of triumph faded from her eyes, she had grown worn and weary. The roses were wilting on the walls, the lights were mostly down now. Hetty, looking in to see if anything was wanted, found herself driven away almost fiercely.
• [Pg 157]
• One of the peculiarities of trip-hammers as machines is the mechanical difficulties in connecting them with the driving power, especially in cases where there are a number of hammers to be driven from one shaft.
• Fourth. The arrangement of the parts of a combination machine have to be modified by the relations between them, instead of being adapted directly to the work to be performed.
• "And in the meantime what do you propose to do?" she asked, swiftly.
• The combination of several functions in one machine, although it may not seem an important matter to be considered here, is nevertheless one that has much to do with the manufacture of machines, and constitutes what may be termed a principle of construction.
• 4. The speed at which shafts should run is governed by their size, the nature of the machinery to be driven, and the kind of bearings in which they are supported.
• "Are you quite sure," he asked, "that Mamie is her own child?"
• He paused abruptly, aware that certain peculiar changes were taking place in the physiognomy of the Clockwork man. His strange organism seemed to be undergoing a series of exceedingly swift and complicated[Pg 138] physical and chemical processes. His complexion changed colour rapidly, passing from its usual pallor to a deep greenish hue, and then to a hectic flush. Concurrent with this, there was a puzzling movement of the corpuscles and cells just beneath the skin.
• She was alone now; she could give vent to her passionate anger. She smashed her fan across her knee, she tore her long gloves into fragments. Dimly, in a mirror opposite, she saw her white ghastly face, and the stain of blood where she had caught her lips between her teeth.
• Engines operated by means of hot air, called caloric engines, and engines operated by gas, or explosive substances, all act substantially upon the same general principles as steam-engines; the greatest distinction being between those engines wherein the generation of heat is by the combustion of fuel, and those wherein heat and expansion are produced by chemical action. With the exception of a limited number of caloric or air engines, steam machinery comprises nearly all expansive engines that are employed at this day for motive-power; and it may be safely assumed that a person who has mastered the general principles of steam-engines will find no trouble in analysing and understanding any machinery acting from expansion due to heat, whether air, gas, or explosive agents be employed.
• "But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
• Another peculiar feature in trip-hammers is the rapidity with which crystallisation takes place in the attachments for holding the die blocks to the helves, where no elastic medium can be interposed to break the concussion of the dies. Bolts to pass through the helve, although made from the most fibrous Swedish iron, will on some kinds of work not last for more than ten days' use, and often break in a single day. The safest mode of attaching die blocks, and the one most common, is to forge them solid, with an eye or a band to surround the end of the helve.
• Boring, as distinguished from drilling, consists in turning out annular holes to true dimensions, while the term drilling is applied to perforating or sinking holes in solid material. In boring, tools are guided by axial support independent of the [137] bearing of their edges on the material, while in drilling, the cutting edges are guided and supported mainly from their contact with and bearing on the material drilled.
• The fellow was lying smoothly enough, but Bruce knew that he was lying. There would be awkward explanations presently, when Hetty Lawrence came to speak; for instance, how would it tally with the pretty story that Balmayne was bringing the unconscious form of Maitrank by the garden gate when he was found in the street?
• "I have to my hand," Lawrence went on, "the materials for a magnificent romance. Let us go back a little while. Some week or two ago here we discussed the Corner House. I said it would make the scene of a capital romance. I went further and said I had already sketched the story out. You recollect that?"
• "You see," said Allingham, nodding his head and wiping his moustache with a handkerchief, "let the thing work on your[Pg 49] mind and you ally yourself with these town gossips. They'll talk this affair into a nine days wonder."
• Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick, of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be "back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel, the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
• Efficiency! How he hated the word! It reminded him of his own heart-breaking struggles, not only with the difficulties of an exacting science, but with the complexities of the time in which his youth had been spent, a time when all the intelligent young men had been trying to find some way out of the social evils that then existed—and still existed, as an ironical memorial to their futile efforts. In those days one scarcely dared to move in intellectual circles without having evolved one's personal solution of the social problem, an achievement that implied a great deal of hard reading, attendance at Fabian meetings, and a certain amount of voluntary thinking.
• "Rather. An expert couldn't do it under an hour. Both those tyres will have to come off. Now what are we to do?"
• "No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this; Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow, and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight than I've been since the night the mistake was made."
• Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say had hoped?"
• The numbers were forthcoming, of course--190753 to 190832, the first half of which eighty ￡5 notes had been alluded to in the murdered man's letter.
• A search was being made for the fugitives in every place but the right one. The railings of the square were high, so that it never occurred to any one that the culprits might have escaped that way. They had got off somehow. In the opinion of most of the people there they had stopped the motor and started it again on its headlong course, after which they had mingled with the crowd.
• The rebuke sounded in the best of taste. Gordon bowed.

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