re roomy than is usual, its horses seemed slightly
bigger, the appointments a shade more perfect, the servants perched
somewhat higher on the box. The dresses of three women--two young
and pretty, and one, handsome, large, of mature age--seemed to fill
completely the shallow body of the carriage. The fourth face was that
of a man, heavy lidded, distinguished and sallow, with a somber, thick,
iron-gray imperial and mustaches, which somehow had the air of solid
appendages. His Excellency--

The rapid motion of that one equipage made all the others appear utterly
inferior, blighted, and reduced to crawl painfully at a snail's pace.
The landau distanced the whole file in a sort of sustained rush; the
features of the occupant whirling out of sight left behind an impression
of fixed stares and impassive vacancy; and after it had vanished in full
flight as it were, notwithstanding the long line of vehicles hugging the
curb at a walk, the whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie open
and emptied of life in the enlarged impression of an august solitude.

Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his mind, disturbed in
its meditation, turned with wonder (as men's minds will do) to matters
of no importance. It struck him that it was to this port, where he had
just sold his last ship, that he had come with the very first he had
ever owned, and with his head full of a plan for opening a new trade
with a distant part of the Archipelago. The then governor had given
him no end of encouragement. No Excellency he--this Mr. Denham--this
governor with his jacket off; a man who tended night and day, so to
speak, the growing prosperity of the settlement with the self-forgetful
devotion of a nurse for a child she loves; a lone bachelor who lived as
in a camp with the few servants and his three dogs in what was called
then the Government Bungalow: a low-roofed structure on the half-cleared
slope of a hill, with a new flagstaff in front and a police orderly on
the veranda. He remembered toiling up that hill under a heavy sun for
his audience; the unfurnished aspect of the cool shaded room; the long
table covered at one end with piles of papers, and with two guns, a
brass telescope, a small bottle of oil with a feather stuck in the neck
at the other--and the flattering attention given to him by the man in
power. It was an undertaking full of risk he had come to expound, but a
twenty minutes' talk in the Government Bungalow on the hil