Various

“ Josiah could not at any time make out forms of people. The white highways that ran like threads among the fields, and the tiny openings in the towns and villages which he guessed were streets, seemed to belong to a dead world, for nowhere was there trace of living person. The strange stillness that brooded over the earth was made more uncanny by cries that occasionally seemed to float in the air around them, behind, before, to the right or to the left, but never exactly beneath the car. They could hear people calling, and the captain said that they were running after the balloon and cheering. ”

“ Betty's heart beat fast. He had forced her to love him, and such maidens as Betty Ives when they give love at last, give life itself. Dame Rachel glanced from one to another, then she rose quickly, and from a dark corner of the room produced a pack of cards. "Come, fair lady and noble gentleman," she said, with a touch of the professional whine in her voice. "Will you hear your fortunes? Cross the old gipsy's hand with silver, my pretty dears, and you shall hear all the good things past, present, and future, that may fall to your lot." ”

“ The tears rose to Betty's eyes.
"God grant him a safe escape to France," she said earnestly.
"It is a good and a charitable wish, sweetheart," said John somewhat gloomily. "But men who have lived as Wild Jack has lived, dread, exile as much as death."
"Surely," said Betty, "that depends upon whether he is utterly friendless, or has any who love him."
"Wild Jack is not utterly friendless," he answered with a grave sweet smile. ”

“ Philip Vansittart thinks he has never spent such a divinely happy evening as this. Virginia sings to him; her voice thrills to his very soul. Mr. Hamilton is asleep in the next room. As for Virginia, when she is alone, she first smiles a happy, triumphant smile, because she knows he loves her, and then she bursts into a passion of tears and sobs until her whole frame is convulsed. If his mind is really set against marriage, what will become of her! She feels as though life without him must be one long night of despair. ”

“ The world knows the truth—marriage can never whitewash Virginia in society's eyes—no future can condone the crime of the past. He has settled every farthing he has in the world upon her—no mean fortune—he loads her with gifts—he is perpetually thinking of her pleasure and amusement, and yet, for ever, the load of his debt to her weighs down his soul. ”

“ The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of cream colour, salmon and rose, and he had a rose-coloured crest. But lovely as he was, John Broom's eyes were on another cage, where, silent, solemn, and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-coloured trimmings and fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty's pet, that the poor child's heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.
"If you let him get at you, you'll not do it a second time, mate," said the man. "He's the nastiest tempered beast I ever saw. ”

“ Betty put out her hand and laid it on Sir James Templemore's arm.
"What is it?" she said in a ghastly whisper.
"Ah, a sad sight indeed," said he sadly. "There hangs as noble a gentleman as ever drew sword for the king, God bless him."
"Who is it?" she asked again; the whisper came hissing forth.
"Who? God rest his soul, he had many names. He was Wild Jack Barnstaple, alias John Johnstone of Belton, alias Daredevil Jack of the North." ”

“ It was an old-fashioned kitchen garden with flowers in the borders. There were single rose-colored tulips which had been in the garden as long as Miss Betty could remember, and they had been so increased by dividing the clumps that they now stretched in two rich lines of colour down both sides of the long walk. And John Broom saw them.
"Pick the pretty flowers, love," said he, in imitation of Thomasina's patronising tone, and forthwith beginning at the end, he went steadily to the top of the right-hand border, mowing the rose-coloured tulips as he went. ”

“ With a sweep of her fan Mistress Mary renounced her waning youth.
"Stay with you!" she cried, "that will I! and you and I from the window will superintend our dear young ones. Alas!" she said, with a languishing look, "how lonely the house will seem when you are bereft of your daughter."
Mr. Ives sighed deeply.
Outside in the gloaming, Betty Ives and her young lover walked slowly backwards and forwards under the orchard trees.
"No father, no mother, no sisters!" she said, looking up into his face. "No one to love, no one to love you!" ”

“ It would not sound dignified to say that the farm-bailiff took pleasure in thwarting John Broom. But he certainly did not show his satisfaction when the boy did do his work properly. Perhaps he thought that praise is not good for young people; and the child did not often give him the chance of trying. Of blame he was free enough. Not a good scolding to clear the air, such as Thomasina would give to Annie the lass, but his slow, caustic tongue was always growling, like muttered thunder, over John Broom's incorrigible head. ”

“ She clung to the parson as a support under both her sources of trouble, but Miss Betty ran on and back, and hither and thither, looking for the diamond. Miss Kitty and the parson looked too, and how many aggravating little bits of glass and silica, and shining nothings and good-for-nothings there are in the world, no one would believe who has not looked for a lost diamond on a high road. ”

“ I never dreamed you would adopt a beggar child as your heir; but I hope you mean to send it to the workhouse, if the gipsy tramps it belongs to are not to be found?"
"We have not made up our minds, sir, as to the course we propose to pursue," said Miss Betty, with outward dignity proportioned to her inward doubts.
"My dear ladies," said the lawyer anxiously, "let me implore you not to be rash. To adopt a child in the most favorable circumstances is the greatest of risks. But if your benevolence will take that line, pray adopt some little boy out of one of your tenants' families. ”

“ When Miss Betty got back to the window, John Broom had just made an injudicious grab at the steel chain, on which Pretty Cocky flew fiercely at him, and John, burying his face in his arms, received the attack on his thick poll, laughing into his sleeves and holding fast to the chain, whilst the cockatoo and the little ladies screamed against each other.
"It'll break your leg—you'll tear its eyes out!" cried Miss Kitty.
"Miss Kitty means that you'll break its leg, and it will tear your eyes out," Miss Betty explained through the glass. "John Broom! Come away! Lock it in! Let it go!" ”

“ John Broom preferred flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered nosegays of daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he would present these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent eyes, for many a smashed teacup.
But the tramp-baby's restless spirit was soon weary of the drying-ground, and he set forth one morning in search of "fresh woods and pastures new." He had seated himself on the threshold to take off his shoes, when he heard the sound of Thomasina's footsteps, and, hastily staggering to his feet, toddled forth without farther delay. ”

“ Ives was the parson, lay about two miles beyond Wancote, in a low valley nestling under a great wave of the downs. Behind the village a chalk cliff rose white and dazzling, and the warm red brick of the houses, the gleaming chalk, the bright tender green of the herbage, formed one of those sunny pictures of which Berkshire is full.
In the centre of the village rose the little church, with its square grey tower, over which grew a magnificent creeper with crimson leaves glowing with a wondrous richness of colour. ”

“ Barnes," said Betty in her natural voice, "I have a proposal to make to you. Give the valuables you have to us—to Miss Mary Jones and to myself. Wild Jack, all say, is a gentleman—should he, by any unfortunate chance, be on the road to-night, he will not rob women. Your money will be safe."
"No, no, no, no!" cried Mary. "Betty, how can you propose anything so impossible, so unfeminine! Are not men our natural protectors?" and she threw a languishing glance at the cattle-breeder. "Shall we usurp their rights?" ”

“ Barnes. Betty bowed slightly. The light fell full on her tall figure, on her noble head slightly raised and thrown back, the nostrils dilated, the colour glowing richly in the soft cheek. Wild Jack, looking at her, felt a glow of enthusiasm which betrayed itself in his voice.
"You have nothing to fear, madam," he said.
"I? I fear nothing," said the girl calmly—"Wild Jack is a gentleman."
The highwayman made a rapid sign to his comrades, who proceeded to throw themselves on to Samuel Barnes, and begin to search him from head to foot. ”

“ There was no playing truant on board ship; and as to the master poor John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in hard corners, it had never struck him that when one has got good food and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than many people, and enough to be thankful for. ”

“ Mr. Ives persuaded Mary to remain for supper. The candles were brought in, and the room looked bright and cheery.
"Stay with me and cheer my loneliness," said the parson cheerily. "The young folk will stroll in the garden till supper be ready. I am too old for dewy twilight walks, egad."
Was it a new idea that flashed into Mary's mind that caused her to start? She glanced at Mr. Ives' comely person, at his glossy cassock, his smartly-buckled shoes, at the neat tie-wig which surmounted a face which she hastily pronounced as handsome as it ever had been. ”

“ She loved society; no woman was more calculated to shine in it, and from this she was cut off. True, they constantly entertained brilliant and clever men, whose conversation and company were very agreeable to her; but, however much a woman may like, may even prefer the society of men, it is a bitter thought to her that she cannot command that of her own sex. And, though men treated her with even a greater and more delicate courtesy than they would perhaps have shown their own women, Virginia was none the less keenly conscious of the moral ban under which she lay. ”

“ I am sorry to say that John Broom's fitful industry was still kept for his own fancies. To climb trees, to run races with the sheep dog, to cut grotesque sticks, gather hedge fruits, explore a bog, or make new friends among beasts and birds—at such matters he would labor with feverish zeal. But so far from trying to cure himself of his indolence about daily drudgery, he found a new and pleasant excitement in thwarting the farm-bailiff at every turn. ”

“ Marriage," passionately, "kills love, and I would rather, ten times over, suffer what I have suffered—and God knows that is not a little!--than a day should come when, having known such divine happiness as I should know were you mine, we should grow cold and weary; when our passions should turn to indifference, to disappointment and heart-burnings, and end, perhaps, in our cherishing feelings of vindictive spite and bitterness against each other, and in my thinking every woman pleasanter and fairer than you, end in your believing me to be the greatest brute under heaven!" ”

“ Lord Harford had set down nothing in malice. What he told Virginia is absolutely true. Philip Vansittart is in love with a gay, pretty child, whose winsome tricks have coiled her round his heart. He has never spoken one word of love to her, for he feels and knows himself as much bound to Virginia as though the marriage-tie he once so utterly abhorred linked them. He no longer, strange to say, thinks and speaks so evilly of marriage. Were he free, would he not joyfully chain himself with all the bonds that church and society can impose to this sweet young life which would make him young again? ”

“ I bethought myself that my Seagull was as noble an animal as Wild Jack's."
"I am sure that he has not his equal in the wide world!" cried Betty.
John Johnstone turned suddenly to her and said: "Do you still keep up your interest in that poor sinner Wild Jack, sweet Bet? or has it died away in your gentle breast?"
"I shall never forget our first, and (heaven grant) our last interview," she answered with a smile. "How he justified my trust in him!"
"Poor Jack," said John Johnstone thoughtfully. "I knew Jack well once; you were right to have faith in him. He has done good service to the Cause. ”