“I wonder whether he keeps that revolver loaded?” said Chris, half aloud, as he rose and began to descend the cliff. “Bah! If he does, he couldn’t hit me in the dark, and hurry of his aim.”
All the same, though, his active imagination was hard at work, showing him a series of dissolving views, in one of which a gallant youth was wading a deep fosse, with an irate parent standing on the bank, firing shot after shot, till in the dim light there was a fall and a splash as the aforesaid gallant youth fell back into the moat as he was crawling out, and not found until the next day.
Would Claude weep and break her heart? Would—
“A fellow of my age, with an ordinary share of brains, to go on dreaming and mooning over such sentimental nonsense!” cried Chris, half aloud. “He’d better shoot at me. If he does, hang me if I wait. I’ll coax her into coming right away.
“By Jove! I’ll try to-night. I wonder whether Mary would help me if she knew?”
Volume Two—Chapter Six.
Getting Languid.
If Chris Lisle had had a binocular with him when he climbed the great cliff slope, and looked down into Gartram’s garden, he would not have felt those poignant, jealous pangs. His eyes were good, and he could see that female figures were in the garden, and, naturally enough, he concluded that they were Claude and Mary. Then he saw that another figure was there, a male—he could make that out—and he quite as naturally, as he had seen Glyddyr on his way to the Fort, concluded that this was he.