The Argosy, Volume XXIV — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

12 Gabriel’s Appointment. stone step, pretending sleepiness, but watching him under his eyelids, with every hair on the alert, ready to bound up and go after him to the world’s end. ‘The touch, the voice, the ways of this new lord were ecstasy to Settler’s sport-loving heart, after his endurance of honourable captivity among commonplace and uncongenial spirits ; and he was ripe for the wildest frolic ever devised by man or beast. But the longing was unshared by his master, to whom the silence of that lonely spot, in the mild April evening beneath the stars, was more like rest than anything he had known since he came to England. The state of siege in which they had lived during the last few weeks had kept his senses always on the stretch, while wearied out by the unceasing noise of the city. His mind, meanwhile, had been hourly receiving new impressions, making new discoveries, finding fresh food for thought, and straining after the variety of knowledge which flowed as unconsciously from David Forrest’s conversation as teaching did from his daily life. To the good mission-priest, accustomed to encounter every degree of stolidity, vacuity, and’ in- difference, the intercourse with such intelligent ignorance as Martin’s had been so attractive that he overlooked the risk of pouring too much into his mind at once. Night after night they had sat up together, the one relating, explaining, or quoting from the stores at : his command ; the other listening, marvelling, drinking it all in, and occasionally asking a question: and but for Miss Thirza and Gabriel, neither would have had his proper share of rest. And, reluctant as the neophyte had been to leave London, it was a positive relief to be there on his lonely watch, leaning on his gun, and with a task before him more familiar to his experience than dealing with books—the task of a secret search under the eye of a hidden enemy. That he should be followed and watched he could not doubt; it was one reason for consenting to occupy the post, so as to direct attention from his friends. He had been too fully taken up with the business in hand to think of anything else since his arrival; and now that he was alone, his mind and he seemed for the first time to come face to face, so as to allow him to see in what respect it had suffered change. The day had not yet come for him to wish, with Alexander Selkirk, that he could return to his former life; on the contrary, he wondered now that he had been content with it so long. Certainly, were he to sail back to-morrow, he could never be again the same man—these cravings, yearnings, aspirations after something greater, wiser, better than his own experience and knowledge could show, would never be satisfied with what had sufficed him then. And yet, in this new world, so full of unfathomed wonders, what place was there for him? What was he fit for, but to do what he was doing, and to clear the way for Gabriel’s peace ? “They shall not break his heart by touching his wife while I am here,” he said aloud, as he threw his gun over his shoulder. ‘“ Come, comicbooks.com