Burnisher

“ At B, Fig. 79, is shown the method of turning the edge of a bevel edge scraper; the student will notice that the angles are similar to those shown at A, except that the first stroke is made at nearly the same angle as the bevel of the scraper. An edge may often be turned at one stroke, and more than three should rarely be necessary. If more than three are made, the edge may be turned too far, which is worse than not being turned enough. The strokes should be made in the order indicated by the figures of the angles of the burnisher ”

“ Not much of a reconciliation so far as words went, but Burney's breath became uneven with emotion. Did you ever see a man take a butterfly from his net carefully, so as not to brush the bloom from its wings? Just so gently did Burney lift her into his arms and carry her down the bluff. And all the while he did not speak. He could think of nothing to say that would not sound irreverent.
Vida spoke but once when he had carried her with safe gentleness down the steepest ledge. "It must be an awful comfort to be so strong," she said. "I wish I was as big as you are." ”

“ But I can't compliment you, Demoiselle, upon your choice of a loving partner. He has as hang-dog a physiognomy as a Bow Street prowler might wish to light upon on a summer's day. A most fiend-like aspect, I confess. I don't well make out what you took to him for, Demoiselle? His Cupid's arrows must have been handsomely tipt with gold, to blind you to all that brass of his brow and his port."
Sir Jaspar, distressed for Juliet, and much annoyed by this interruption, however happy in the intelligence to which it was the vehicle, enquired what chance had brought Mr. Riley to Stonehenge? ”

“ Panting, dazed to blank uncomprehension, Spider drew near and watched the amazing spectacle. There was Burney fighting doggedly, silently—fighting for his life. And there was another huge human, and yet not all human, fighting with little, harsh snarls of sheer animal rage and the lust for killing—fighting not for his own life, but for the lives of these others. He was dressed in Burney's old clothes—Spider remembered the gray-striped trousers which Burney had worn a year or so ago; tattered now, torn short off at the hairy knees of the giant. ”

“ Burney, who was a clever enough woman to perceive that it would be unwise to make a grievance of the impudence of a young naval gentleman. “Let it be so; let it be that we are simple, homely, wholesome herrings, we are none the better for such a flying-fish as Mr. Garrick coming among us, giving us, it may be, the notion that our poor fins are wings, and so urging us to make fools of ourselves by emulating the eagle. The moral of your fable is that we should keep to our own element—is not that so, sir?” ”

“ BURNSIDE IS HIMSELF. BUT what a different man was this!
Pete Burnside seemed a full two inches taller. The sullen droop of his mouth at the corners was gone, and a faint smile played there. His square jaw was thrust out a little more than usual, and the very color of his eyes seemed changed, now that he stood so erect, and no shadow fell from the brows across the pupils. And the bearing of his body, at once erect and easy, made him seem ten years younger and three fold stronger. ”

“ Burnet, apparently unarmed, had his revolver securely tucked away.
Burnet had lived long enough in Mesopotamia to have more than a passing acquaintance with the camel, its moods and vagaries; but during the next few days he learnt more about that useful "ship of the desert" than he had known in all his previous experience. His steed tramped on hour after hour at the same steady pace, with a jolting movement that he found unpleasant and tedious. He longed for the lithe, springy, varied gait of a horse, and once ventured to express his preference to his companion. ”

“ For, though Burney's strength was prodigious, the strength of this other was something monstrous. Burney was being beaten back step by step, inch by inch; he was being borne down. Great sweat drops stood on his face. His teeth were clenched in a frozen snarl of supreme physical effort. His knees were bending slowly, slowly—his back was yielding. The huge, hairy hands of the Thing were reaching, reaching—the great talonlike fingers were spread and tensed for the death clutch. The snarl broke suddenly into a scream to freeze one's blood ”

“ Burney lifted his chin from his heaving chest, and stared somberly at the dead. "Sure, I knowed about him," he admitted dismally. "I never knowed he was dangerous, though—till he commenced killin' sheep. Even then I didn't think he'd—tackle a human being. He's—always been harmless. Just—simple-minded and wantin' to live around in caves like an animal. He never hurt nobody—before. It must 'a' just growed on him, kinda, from killin' them—sheep." ”

“ He allowed himself one little human enjoyment. A small bird called a burnet made friends with him and lived in his cell, ate from his fingers and his trencher, and only left him at the breeding season, after which it brought its fledged family back with it. This little friend lived for three years with the prior, and to his great grief came no more in the fourth. The learned have exhausted their arts to discover what a burnet can be, and have given up the chase. ”

“ Don't deride my youth and ignorance, Miss Bassett."
"You can call it L'Argentville, if you would rather," she replied.
"I would rather try the other, thank you," he laughed. "It has a more hilarious sound. Will they despise me at Bloody Gulch, Miss Bassett? I never killed a man in my life."
Barold turned, and walked away, angry, and more melancholy than he could have believed.
"It is time I went back to London," he chose to put it. "The place begins to be deucedly dull."
"Mr. Francis Barold seems rather out of spirits," said Mrs. Burnham to Lady Theobald. ”

“ She put her strong hand forth and thrust him—he was already stiffening—backward from the shoulder, there being no shrinking on her face as she felt his flesh yield beneath her touch, for she had passed the barrier lying between that which is mere life and that which is pitiless hell, and could feel naught that was human. A poor wild beast at bay, pressed on all sides by dogs, by huntsmen, by resistless weapons, by Nature’s pitiless self—glaring with bloodshot eyes, panting, with fangs bared in the savagery of its unfriended agony—might feel thus. ’Tis but a hunted beast ”

“ I—oh, I wish I could take you and wring your neck just like you done to the sheep!" Tears of rage were in her voice. "Just because you're big as all outdoors, you think you can run us out, but you can't—you've got another think coming. If you was twice as big——"
Burney took a step nearer. The crimson had left his face, so that he looked actually pale. "Miss Williams, I never killed your sheep. I don't want to have any trouble with your father unless he drives me to it. I ain't a quarrelsome man when I'm left alone. ”

“ Too big, certainly, for petty crime or foul murder; so big that he did not need to defend himself or his rights with the weapons of ordinary men. Burney, in the two or three years that Spider had known him, never had owned or carried a gun. He never hunted animals, for pleasure or profit—and for men he did not need one. That was why he killed with his hands—if he killed at all.
He went forward grimly enough upon the trail, did Spider, but he went with a great bitterness in his heart. He would kill Burney if he came close enough, but he would sorrow always over the memory of Burney's fall. ”

“ At the top Burney turned and rode forward on the trail which Breed Jim had lately followed, and went forward at a slow, easy trot that slid the miles behind him with the least effort.
At the Sunbeam the men slept heavily in the stuffy darkness of the bunk house. But Burney, their boss, rode and rode through the sage and the lava, and crossed steep gullies, and skirted ledges that no four-footed thing could scale—unless we except the lizards that lived there—and still he went on. The Great Dipper tilted more and more, and the wind rose and blew chill across the uplands. ”

“ Burney, without seeing him, knew that, as he himself would phrase it, he had tipped Fanny a wink. She turned quickly round upon him, and if she had previously any doubt on this point, it was at once dispelled by the solemnity of his face.
[8]
Dr. Burney gave a laugh.
“The influence of Mr. Garrick is like that of the air we breathe,” said he. “It is not to be resisted by the age we live in, leaving family matters out of the question altogether: the Burney family must inhale as much of the spirit of Mr. Garrick as the rest of the town—they cannot help themselves, ces pauvres Burneys! ”

“ Bunty gave her a look of scorn.
"He's sixteen, and the size of a prize-fighter!" he said. "I'd have been half killed. No; Mr. Burnham was just a little way off, and I let out a yell to him, and he came up and I told of him."
"Bunty!" said Poppet. The word came out like the report of a pistol, and her red lips shut again very tightly to prevent any more following.
[Illustration: "MR. BURNHAM CAME UP AND I TOLD OF HIM."]
This touch of cowardice, this failure to grasp simple honour in Bunty's character, was a perpetual grief and amazement to her little fearless soul. ”

“ It seemed odd that Burney should be up there with Vida. He had believed that Burney was riding off the other way, toward the river.
He clutched a splinter of rock, pulled himself up half his length, and looked over the ledge upon baked soil that still sloped steeply up to the crest. He drew himself up by sheer muscular strength over the smooth, black rim and ran up the bluff on his toes until another ledge blocked the way and he must climb again, foot by foot, clinging with his hands and his feet to the face of the rock. ”

“ He was with Major Wilson, when, with a dozen men, the Major started on that quest of the King, which was to lead to Wilson's last stand, one of the most stirring episodes in the annals of English warfare. After the gallant band had ridden into the midst of the Matabele nation, and retreated to a I clump of bush, it was found that, in the pouring, ink-black night, three men were missing. Wilson and Burnham set out to seek them, and by feeling for the traces with his hands, Burnham followed up the spoor of the missing men, and eventually brought them safely back to Wilson's little group. ”

“ During the long, dark night, while I the little band was waiting for reinforcements, Burnham crept stealthily forward in the bush, smelling out the Kaffirs, for he could scent them as a dog does, and getting so close to them that he could touch them as they passed. At daybreak he tracked again, and met his fellow scout Ingram, who had brought Captain Borrow and his twenty men – only to join in the others in destruction. When Wilson prepared to make his last heroic stand, Burnham, Ingram, and a man named Gooding were dispatched as a forlorn hope to rush through to the main column. ”

“ They were both soon afterwards sent for into the parlour by Elinor, who was waiting breakfast for Mrs. Maple, with Harleigh and Ireton. "My dear demoiselle," she cried, "how fares it? We were all so engrossed last night, about a comedy that we have been settling to massacre, that I protest I quite forgot you."
"I ought only, Madam," answered the stranger, with a sigh, "to wonder, and to be grateful that you have ever thought of me."
"Why what's the matter with you now? Why are you so solemn? Is your noble courage cast down? What are you projecting? What's your plan?" ”

“ But then she had her gun safe in its holster at her hip, and the belt sagged with loaded cartridges; and Burney was afraid of a gun. So she put the unwelcome thought of him from her, and went on teasing Spider. Nerves are tricky things, and they take strange whims. But Fate is trickier, and her whims are stranger.
Fate, for instance, sent Shelton C. Sherman straight down a cañon up which Burney was riding slowly, purposefully, saving his big horse deliberately, that he might get from him much in the way of endurance if the need came later. ”

“ He darted from her with the same rapidity, though wide from the same ferocity, as that with which he had at first approached her: vain was every soft appeal, lost was every gentle blandishment; in an instant he was out of sight, out of hearing,—she scarcely saw him go ere he was gone. Faithful creature! she cried, 'tis surely his master who calls! A new tie may excite his benevolence; none can shake his fidelity, nor slacken his services.
Alone and unaided, she had now to pierce a passage through the thicket, uncertain whither it might lead, and filled with apprehensions. ”

“ Juliet, leaning out, as far as was in her power, from the chaise-window, called with energy for help.
"What do you mean?" cried he, striving to draw her back. "What are you afraid of? You don't imagine me such a blundering cavalier, as to intend to carry you off by force?"
The postilion was assisting the two men to fix their horse, for dragging back their cart; but her cries reached their ears, and one of them, advancing to the chaise, exclaimed, "Good now! if it is not Miss Ellis!" And, to her infinite relief and comfort, she beheld young Gooch. ”

“ She tried to keep her wits and to climb intelligently, and she kept an angle that would take her farther down the cañon. If she reached the top she would be nearer Spider and safety—for she felt that with Spider she would be safe. There was no reason in that, of course, for Burney, if he chose, could kill her and Spider together with his hands. That was the horror—the great, strong hands of Burney, and his powerful, long arms. ”