“And I my pistols,” said Wentworth.
“I sall carree ze good cavalree sabre wis my pistol,” said Bagasse.
“And I’ll take that hickory stick of mine with the lead knob, and that’ll give any feller a headache that wants one,” said the Captain, with his head ominously askew.
“Good, everything’s settled,” said Harrington. “Now, gentlemen, to-night at twelve. We shall get there by two at the latest, if there’s any breeze at all, and probably at one. You’d better all meet here, and go down together. I will meet you at the boat.”
“Agreed,” said Wentworth. “Now, Bagasse, you and I will go after Johnny.”
“And I home,” said Harrington. “I’ll meet you again at twelve.”
He lingered a few moments after they had gone, musing with a kindled and exulting face, and then with a sudden yearning to pour out his gladness to Muriel, he seized his hat and left the room. In the yard he happened to think of the dog, and he went for a moment to the kennel. The animal was lying on its side, apparently asleep, and Harrington was just about to turn away, when he chanced to notice that its eyes were partly open. Surprised a little, he bent down, and laid his hand on the animal. It did not move. The old dog was dead.
He arose, and stood for a moment with a vacant and reeling brain; then turned, and with a dazed feeling, went into the street and on his way. The clouds were still bright and wild in the afternoon sky, and tottering fantastically into ever mutable strange shapes, fierce, dazzling, sphinxine, wonderful. He gazed at them for a little while as he strode on, until oppressed by their instability, and with a dark sense that they were like an untranslatable hieroglyphic of something that had been, or was, or was to be, and that could not be defined, he turned his eyes from them, his heart throbbing thick and fast, and his burning brain giddy with a fullness of life which, like the clouds, seemed to reel in dissolution, and yet, like them, did not dissolve away.