"
With this sort of careless dialogue, which Barnstable engaged in, that
his men might discover no alteration in his manner, they approached the
mouldering walls that had proved so frail a protection to the party
under Griffith.
A short time was passed in examining the premises, when the wearied
seamen took possession of one of the dilapidated apartments, and
disposed themselves to seek that rest of which they had been deprived by
the momentous occurrences of the past night.
Barnstable waited until the loud breathing of the seamen assured him
that they slept, when he aroused the drowsy boy, who was fast losing his
senses in the same sort of oblivion, and motioned him to follow. Merry
arose, and they stole together from the apartment, with guarded steps,
and penetrated more deeply into the gloomy recesses of the place.
CHAPTER XXVI.
_Mercury_. "I permit thee to be Sosia again."
_Dryden,_
We must leave the two adventurers winding their way among the broken
piles, and venturing boldly beneath the tottering arches of the ruin, to
accompany the reader, at the same hour, within the more comfortable
walls of the abbey; where, it will be remembered, Borroughcliffe was
left in a condition of very equivocal ease. As the earth had, however,
in the interval, nearly run its daily round, circumstances had
intervened to release the soldier from his confinement--and no one,
ignorant of the fact, would suppose that the gentleman who was now
seated at the hospitable board of Colonel Howard, directing, with so
much discretion, the energies of his masticators to the delicacies of
the feast, could read, in his careless air and smiling visage, that
those foragers of nature had been so recently condemned, for four long
hours, to the mortification of discussing the barren subject of his own
sword-hilt.
Pages:
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398