Billhook

“ Captain Billop married a Miss Farmer, sister of a Supreme Court judge in the neighboring province of New Jersey. They had one child, a daughter, who married her cousin, Thomas Farmer, and he, succeeding to the manor of Bentley, changed his name to Billop. Both died young and their tombstones are to be seen at the house to-day. Christopher Billop, their only son, born 1735, was a prominent man in public affairs throughout his life. In the Revolution he was intensely loyal to the crown, and became a colonel in the British army. ”

“ His companion made no immediate answer, but by and by she once more glanced up at him.
"I am really not used to climbing if Shafton is, and I am not going any further just now," she said.
A newly-felled cedar lay conveniently near the trail, but its wide-girthed trunk stood high above the underbrush, and Brooke dragged up a big hewn-off branch to make a footstool before his companion sat down on it. The branch was heavy, and she watched his efforts approvingly.
"Canada has made you another man. Now, I do not think Shafton could have done that in a day," [Pg 184] she said. ”

“ In fact, I'm quite willing to let up on Waynefleet's holding, too. I can't get a dollar out of him."
"Have you offered to sell the mortgage to anybody?"
"I saw Martial and the Charters people not long ago. They'd give about eighty cents on the dollar. Hutton said he'd make me a bid, but he didn't."
"Well," said Acton, "my friend here wants that ranch for a particular purpose. He'd bid you ninety."
"I can't do it. If the new roads that have been suggested are made, the ranch ought to bring me a little more. Still, I don't mind letting you in at what I gave for it."
Acton looked at Nasmyth. ”

“ We were considering the possibility of doing better in Kansas City and Saint Joe and had half decided to go to those places when one day Jack came rushing in, exclaiming:
"I've struck it. I've struck just the rig that we want. A lot of fine-haired fellows from the East have just got in from a buffalo hunt with a splendid outfit they want to sell. They will take anything they can get for it, because they are going back East on the railroad and are in a hurry to get off; and who do you think I found in charge of the outfit but Wild Bill Hickock? ”

“ That would account for lack of spoor, you know.”
“Quite right, young buffalo hunter,” nodded old Hesketh. “But we’ve got no snakes that do that. All the tree sorts are harmless. The thing stumps me but—there it is.”
“By Jingo, but I’d like to—” And Dick stopped short. Old Hesketh turned on him a lack-lustre eye.
“To try and solve the mystery yourself?” he supplied. “M’yes. You’d better let it alone, young fellow. Keep your energies for another destroying buffalo, and you may come out of that with a whole skin. Eh, Greenoak?”
The latter, who had been a silent listener, nodded assent. ”

“ The window was open wide, and a clean smell of freshly cut cedar drifted in with the aromatic fragrance of the pines. From where he sat Wheelock could see them rolling up the steep hillside with the white mists streaming athwart them, and the narrow lane of clear, green water winding past their feet. There was deep stillness among them, for the mill was silent at last, and it was only now and then that a voice rose faintly from the little wooden settlement which straggled up the riverside. ”

“ Any man who wanted land would have to buy it as it was."
"A man who wished to start a ranch would naturally prefer it with the water run out of it."
"Precisely!" argued Nasmyth's informant. "That is why you got the charter. Still, I wasn't contemplating the man who merely wished to ranch."
His smile suggested that he intended to say no more upon that subject, and when he turned and glanced through the doorway into the lighted room, Nasmyth saw that he was looking at Violet Hamilton. Nasmyth also noticed that Carshalton was once more seated beside the girl. ”

“ They had put the truss where it ought to go and the bolts would hold until all was fast.
Then Kit remembered Austin. Bob had stopped, as if he saw he was not needed. He turned and pushed his hand along a bar, and Kit thought he meant to go down. A foreman shouted, and the wire tackles running from the girder overhead went slack. A big iron pulley dropped a foot or two and the hook it carried disengaged. Kit doubted if the hook struck Austin, but it looked as if he heard the noise and tried to avoid the shock. His boots rattled on the iron and his shoulders went back. ”

“ Gordon laughed. “Is there anybody else you feel inclined to ask about?”
“Yes,” said Nasmyth, “there certainly is. How is Miss Waynefleet?”
Gordon looked down at his cigar. “Well,” he said, “I’m a little worried on her account. She was attempting to do a great deal more than was good for her when I last saw her. They have no longer a hired man at the ranch. Waynefleet, I understand, is rather tightly fixed for money, and, as you know, he isn’t the kind of man who would deny himself. ”

“ To live there, to sleep in that bed with the silk curtains where the canon slept, to have all Chapeloud's comforts about him, would be, Birotteau felt, complete happiness; he saw nothing beyond it. All the envy, all the ambition which the things of this world give birth to in the hearts of other men concentrated themelves for Birotteau in the deep and secret longing he felt for an apartment like that which the Abbe Chapeloud had created for himself. When his friend fell ill he went to him out of true affection ”

“ After the Restoration Hook seems to have kept up his connection with the independents of New England. Samuel Wilson Taylor, when arrested on his way to New England, on 3 April 1664, confessed that news-books and letters found upon him had been given to him by Hook for delivery in New England. Hook died on 21 March 1677, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, London (Dexter's Congregationalism, 586 n.) ”

“ The first interesting house one meets on entering the village from the south is the old Dutch parsonage which, being of brick, was a tower of strength against the Indians as well as the Devil. The Indians raided this region in 1755 and visited the neighborhood of Kinderhook at a time when the men were away, but their stout-hearted wives and daughters were equal to the occasion; for, donning such male attire as they could find and shouldering the family arms, they made such a brave show in and about the fort that the Indians retired without attempting its capture. ”

“ He awkwardly pulled out his watch.
“Bob is starting to help us at the bridge. Don’t you see him loading up blankets and sending for his best men? Old Bob is not the sort to let a pal freeze, and a Canadian doesn’t stop for snow!”
For a time they were silent. The blizzard beat the walls and the stove got cold. Then Alison said in a quiet voice:
“The train has gone down the line, but I’m not very much afraid. At Winnipeg I was afraid. You see, I knew I must go alone.... The snow is getting deep, and I daresay it blocks the track....”
Kit saw he had not persuaded her help would arrive. ”

“ It was his custom to gather the people of the island once a year on the lawn in front of his house and hold a ‘harvest home.’... Passionately fond of horses, his stable was filled with the finest bred animals in the land. He was a magnificent rider and was very fond of the saddle. He was an expert shot with the pistol, which once saved his life when he was attacked by robbers. Christopher Billop was not a man to take advice unless it instantly met with his favor.... ”

“ Liphook is the centre of a tract of country thickly settled with “men of light and leading.” From Hindhead and Haslemere on one side, to Rake and Petersfield on the other, are the country homes of men well known to fame. Away towards Haslemere, on the breezy heights of Blackdown, stands the picturesque modern house of Aldworth, the home, in his later years, of Tennyson ”

“ The men seem to consider it a waste of time to talk to anybody who doesn't know all about ranches and mines, and Shafton has Miss Goldie to attend to. She has attached herself to him like a limpet, but she is, of course, a Canadian, and I really don't mind."
Almost involuntarily Brooke contrasted her with a Canadian who had spent a week in the woods with him. Barbara Heathcote had never appeared out of place in the wilderness, for she was wholly natural and had moved amidst those scenes of wild grandeur as though in harmony with them, with the stillness of that lonely land in her steady eyes. ”

“ Jasparin woke him to a sense of his peril and his importance. This boy or lad occupied a chamber in what is now, I think, Mr. Headlam’s house, which was part of the old meeting place of Pop (now more splendidly housed) , and he woke about midnight to find Hook sitting in his room. Addressed indignantly, the Solitary was meditating too profoundly to hear, and the boy was about to make another remark when he fell asleep again. He will never come nearer to being torn apart like a pair of shorts. How Hook obtained access to this room is not known. ”

“ Sigenok called us early in the morning, and, after a hasty breakfast, in high spirits we mounted our horses, and accompanied the band of hunters. We made a wide circuit, so as to let the wind blow from the buffaloes towards us. I should tell you that the animal denominated the buffalo by the North Americans is what is properly called the bison by naturalists. They roam in vast herds over the interior of America, from Mexico as far north as the large river Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg. ”

“ Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the greatest gentleman'—or roue—of Europe, those who hunted her down will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of London and threaten his very life. ”

“ Seattle may deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,—it is frightfully long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said soul, to habits which are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,—the pleasures of the table. ”

“ The liberal student became a royalist, and sought to win the favor of influential persons. When a grand prix man behaves thus, his comrades call him a trimmer. The young architect in question had two ways open to him,—either to serve the perfumer well, or put him under contribution. Birotteau the deputy-mayor, Birotteau the future possessor of half the lands about the Madeleine, where he would sooner or later build up a fine neighborhood, was a man to keep on good terms with. Grindot accordingly resolved to sacrifice his immediate gains to his future interests. ”

“ In 1641 appeared in London his sermon entitled ‘New England's Teares for Old England's Feares,’ which was preached on 23 July 1640, ‘being a day of publique humiliation.’ Winthrop cannot be right in identifying Hook with the William Hooke who was in New England as early as 1633, when he witnessed the delivery of the Pemaquid grant, and was afterwards one of Sir Ferdinando Gorges's council.
In America, says Wood, Hook ‘continued his practices without control for some time;’ in other words he preached as an independent. ”

“ We are free to confess that two things surprise us in this business. The first, that anything which we have thought worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. [Pg 138] Hook's; and secondly, that such a person as Mr. Hook should think himself disgraced by a connection with John Bull.'
After the death of the Queen, Hook devoted himself to the demolition of the Whigs and Radicals. ”

“ It was a bitter afternoon when Charnock got down at the little prairie station that was marked by a water-tank, the agent's shack, and the lower frames of three unfinished grain elevators. He hired a rig at the livery stable, and borrowing a fur-robe started on his drive across the plain. The landscape was empty and featureless except for the gray smears of distant bluffs. Nothing moved on the white expanse, and there was no sound but the measured thud of the horses' feet; the air was still and keen with frost. ”

“ They went at the work with a rush, and the little oblong marked out upon the prairie sod became alive with toiling figures. Tall birch posts rose as by magic, with struggling men thrusting with the long pike-poles beneath them; stringers, plates and ties seemed to fly into place; and Alison, sitting on the grass with Mrs. Farquhar, wondered as the skeleton of the house grew moment by moment before her eyes. She had never thought it possible that a dwelling could be built in a night ”

“ Moreover it is rumored that the golden reports from the Allashook were invented by a couple of men, one of whom has eight hundred pounds of provisions over there to sell, and the other wants to be recorder of claims.
There are other reports of strikes up the river, but I for one shall pay no heed, nor will I write about them. Several people have been up from camps below, trying to get loads of provisions. They are having a hard time. Several have returned and two are waiting for better weather. It is really dangerous traveling now. More than one man has nearly lost his life. ”