Between Snow and Fire — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

130° "TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE. If his cousin had been a different stamp of man and one built of finer clay, it is more than probable that Eustace would have acted differently—would have conquered that overmastering and unlawful love which he had so long and so successfully concealed, or at any rate would have fled from temptation. But it was far otherwise. The fellow was such a rough, assertive, thickheaded, inconsiderate boor, utterly unable to appreciate his own splendid good fortune. He deserved no mercy. Yet this was the being to whom Eanswyth was bound—whom, moreover, she had managed to tolerate with every semblance of, at any rate, contentment, until he himself had laid seige to the castle of her outwardly calm, but glowingly passionate nature, and had carried it by storm, by a single coup de main. And now? How could she ever resume that old con- tented toleration, how reiegate himself to an outside place. Every look—every word of hers—during that last walk, when he had come upon her so unexpectedly—every sweet and clinging caress during that last parting, was burnt into his memory as with red-hot irons. And now it seemed that the curtain must be rung down on everything. Tom Car- hayes was returning in rude health ; louder, more boastful, a more aggressive personality than ever. Let the very heavens fall ! A change had come over Eustace. He became moody and taciturn, at times strangely irritable for one of his equable temperament. ‘This was noticed by many ; won- dered at by some. “ Why, what’s the row with you, old chap!” said Car- hayes one day in his bluff, off-hand manner. “Sick and sorry that we can’t scare up another fight, eh?”’ ‘“ Milne’s conscience is hitting him hard over the number of his ‘blanket friends’ he has shot already. Ha, ha!” cut in another man, with an asinine guffaw. The Kaffrarian Rangers were ordered home. The order reached them in their camp on the Bashi, and forthwith they acted upon it. No preparations delayed the setting out of such a light-marching-order corps. Accordingly the breakfasts were cooked and eaten, the camp was struck, and the whole troop started upon its homeward way. “T say, Hoste!” said Carhayes, while they were break- fasting on boiled mealies and ration beef. ‘“ What do you (elo) m Eomichbooks