A remembrance of an ancient superstition flashed through the master's mind, and he determined to try the Sortes Virgilianae. He shut the volume, and opened it again at a venture.—The story of Laocoon!
He read with a strange feeling of unwilling fascination, from “Horresco referees” to “Bis medium amplexi,” and flung the book from him, as if its leaves had been steeped in the subtle poisons that princes die of.
CHAPTER XIII. CURIOSITY.
People will talk. 'Ciascun lo dice' is a tune that is played oftener than the national air of this country or any other.
“That 's what they say. Means to marry her, if she is his cousin. Got money himself,—that 's the story,—but wants to come and live in the old place, and get the Dudley property by and by.” “Mother's folks was wealthy.”—“Twenty-three to twenty-five year old.”—“He a'n't more 'n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside.”—“Looks as if he knew too much to be only twenty year old.”—“Guess he's been through the mill,—don't look so green, anyhow, hey? Did y' ever mind that cut over his left eyebrow?”
So they gossiped in Rockland. The young fellows could make nothing of Dick Venner. He was shy and proud with the few who made advances to him. The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but he looked at them like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of, ordering his wives by the dozen.
“What do you think of the young man over there at the Venners'?” said Miss Arabella Thornton to her father.
“Handsome,” said the Judge, “but dangerous-looking. His face is indictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is a blank at the Sheriff's office, with a place for his name in it?”
The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to the verdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.