"I shall depute the task to a worthy fellow named
Willis, in whom I shall have every confidence. He--he is, in fact,
our local blacksmith!"
And so it came about that when, after a vigil that seemed to last
for a lifetime, Percy heard the key turn in the lock and burst
forth seeking whom he might devour, he experienced an almost
instant quieting of his excited nervous system. Confronting him was
a vast man whose muscles, like those of that other and more
celebrated village blacksmith, were plainly as strong as iron
bands.
This man eyed Percy with a chilly eye.
"Well," he said. "What's troublin' you?"
Percy gulped. The man's mere appearance was a sedative.
"Er--nothing!" he replied. "Nothing!"
"There better hadn't be!" said the man darkly. "Mr. Ferguson give
me this to give to you. Take it!"
Percy took it. It was a shilling.
"And this."
The second gift was a small paper pamphlet. It was entitled "Now's
the Time!" and seemed to be a story of some kind. At any rate,
Percy's eyes, before they began to swim in a manner that prevented
steady reading, caught the words "Job Roberts had always been a
hard-drinking man, but one day, as he was coming out of the
bar-parlour .
Pages:
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222