He mounted therefore and rode up the street.
The roadway was deserted; but along the side-walk,
sober families, marching by twos and threes, turned
their heads at the sound of Bayard’s hoofs on
the cobbles. The Collector set his face and passed
them with a grave look, as of one absorbed in affairs
of moment. Nevertheless, coming to the whitewashed
Church where the streams of worshippers converged and
choking the porchway overflowed upon the street, he
added the courtesy of doffing his hat as he rode by.
He did this still with a set face, looking straight
between Bayard’s ears; but with the tail of his
eye caught one glimpse of a little comedy which puzzled
and amused him.
A small rotund, red-gilled man, in bearing and aspect
not unlike a turkey-cock, was mounting the steps of
the portico. Behind this personage sailed an
ample lady of middle age, with a bevy of younger damsels—his
spouse and daughters doubtless. Suddenly—and
as if, at sight of the Collector, a whisper passed
among them—the middle-aged lady shot out
a hand, arrested her husband by the coat-tail and drew
him down a step, while the daughters ranged themselves
in semicircle around him, spreading their skirts and
together effacing him from view, much as a hen covers
her offspring.
The Collector laughed inwardly as he replaced his
hat, and rode on speculating what this bit of by-play
might mean. But it had passed out of his thoughts
before he came to the outskirts of the town.
Chapter VIII.
ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.
The road—the same by which he had arrived
last night—mounted all the way and led
across the neck of the headland. His business,
however, lay out upon the headland itself and almost
at its extremest verge; and a mile above the town
he struck off to the left where a bridle-path climbed
by a long slant to the ridge. Half an hour’s
easy riding brought him to the top of the ascent,
whence he looked down on the long beach he had travelled
yesterday. The sea lay spread on three sides
of him. Its salt breeze played on his face;
and the bay horse, feeling the tickle of it in his
nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny. “Good,
old boy—is it not?” asked the Collector,
patting his neck. “Suppose we try a breather
of it?”
The chine of the headland—of turf, short-cropped
by the unceasing wind—stretched smooth
as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with a gentle
dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle.
The Collector ran his eye along it in search of the
two men he had come to meet, but could spy neither
of them.
“Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe,”
he decided. “We don’t mind it,
hey? Come along, lad—here’s
wine for heroes!”
He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse
started at a gallop—a rollicking gallop
and in the very tune of his master’s mood; and
if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the
chins of its burghers might have tilted themselves
in wonder at the apparition—a Centaur,
enlarged upon the skyline.
Copyrights
Lady Good-for-Nothing from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
