“The greedy brute has swallowed his pill and is licking his damned chops,” Belden announced. “Well, you black devil, so much for you for throwing me, and so much for your master. You won’t win any race to-morrow nor this year.”
Again examining suspiciously everywhere, they went out as cautiously as they had entered.
Chin Chin chuckled. He was fond of Pallid and fond of the turf, a novel fancy for a Chinaman. He knew if he revealed this adventure to Mr. Waddy, that the race would come to an end, so far as that gentleman was concerned, at least. Chin Chin wanted to see the fun. Unluckily for Figgins, he had bets with him. Chin Chin determined to consider himself the executive of retribution and keep his own counsel till after the race. He looked at the ball; he smelt it.
“Pose good for Chinaman,” he said, “ebryting all same pigeon eat em rat; eat em puppy; pose eat em sossidge. Hi yah! first chop good, all same.”
He nibbled a little bit, ate a little bit, and then looking out and finding the coast clear, cautiously crept homeward in the shadow. As he ate, he seemed at first very well satisfied, then less satisfied, and finally not at all satisfied, and throwing away the remnants of the ball, he made for the Millard, pressing both his hands on that part of his person which seemed the centre of dissatisfaction.
CHAPTER XXI
THE STORY OF DIANA AND ENDYMION
DIANA was still very ill. They found it necessary to keep her perfectly quiet. The old wound, never fully healed, had given her much pain of late. Mental excitement at the picnic and her fall had produced feverish symptoms. Her physician had fears which he hardly ventured to express; which he hardly dared formulate, even to himself. She had aroused herself enough during the day to send a kind message by Clara to Dunstan, and to ask that they would write to Miss Sullivan to come on. A letter to that lady would go by the morning mail to Boston.
Dunstan was in an agony of suspense. During the day, he tried to distract his fixed madness of thought by training Pallid over the beach. The other men were also out on the beach or the road. Bets were nearly even on Pallid, Knockknees, and Nosegay. Toward evening, Dunstan mounted his own horse and galloped off up the island. The wild sunset and windy drift of torn, black clouds was such a mood of nature as suited the terror at his heart. It was a night like this when, in Texas, he had started from San Antonio to ride sixty miles across the country and catch his train. There were such stormy masses of weird clouds, so flashed through by an August moon, so floating at midnight, when, as he dashed along the trail, shouting in savage exhilaration, all the wildness of his nature bursting forth in mad songs and chants of Indian war, suddenly his trusty horse, who had borne him thousands of miles in safety by night and day, over deserts of dust and wastes of snow, fell with him, on him, crushing him terribly. And then, by just such fitful gleams of moonlight, he had dragged himself desolately along, with unbroken limbs, but mangled and bleeding—dragged himself whither he saw a midnight lamp, as of one who watched the sick or the dead. And near the spot whence the light came, he had sunk voiceless, fainting, dying, until he was awakened by a tender touch upon his brow, and saw bending over him, in the clear quiet of midnight, Diana, who had found at last and was to save her Endymion: Diana, from that moment to become the passion of his every instinct, the love of every thought.