FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101  
102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   >>   >|  
d cypresses, intent on seeing the Jenkins tomb for himself. No one could suspect anything from merely seeing him there, and all he wanted was one glance at the ancient monument. But Bryce was not to give even one look at Richard Jenkins's tomb that day, nor the next, nor for many days--death met him in another form before he had taken many steps in the quiet enclosure where so much of Wrychester mortality lay sleeping. From over the topmost branches of the old yew trees a great shaft of noontide sunlight fell full on a patch of the grey walls of the high-roofed nave. At the foot of it, his back comfortably planted against the angle of a projecting buttress, sat a man, evidently fast asleep in the warmth of those powerful rays. His head leaned down and forward over his chest, his hands were folded across his waist, his whole attitude was that of a man who, having eaten and drunken in the open air, has dropped off to sleep. That he had so dropped off while in the very act of smoking was evident from the presence of a short, well-blackened clay pipe which had fallen from his lips and lay in the grass beside him. Near the pipe, spread on a coloured handkerchief, were the remains of his dinner--Bryce's quick eye noticed fragments of bread, cheese, onions. And close by stood one of those tin bottles in which labouring men carry their drink; its cork, tied to the neck by a piece of string, dangled against the side. A few yards away, a mass of fallen rubbish and a shovel and wheelbarrow showed at what the sleeper had been working when his dinner-hour and time for rest had arrived. Something unusual, something curiously noticeable--yet he could not exactly tell what--made Bryce go closer to the sleeping man. There was a strange stillness about him--a rigidity which seemed to suggest something more than sleep. And suddenly, with a stifled exclamation, he bent forward and lifted one of the folded hands. It dropped like a leaden weight when Bryce released it, and he pushed back the man's face and looked searchingly into it. And in that instant he knew that for the second time within a fortnight he had found a dead man in Wrychester Paradise. There was no doubt whatever that the man was dead. His hands and body were warm enough--but there was not a flicker of breath; he was as dead as any of the folk who lay six feet beneath the old gravestones around him. And Bryce's practised touch and eye knew that he was only just dead-
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101  
102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

dropped

 

forward

 

sleeping

 

Wrychester

 

folded

 
dinner
 

fallen

 

Jenkins

 

curiously

 
sleeper

unusual

 
arrived
 

Something

 

working

 

dangled

 

bottles

 

labouring

 

rubbish

 

shovel

 

wheelbarrow


string

 

noticeable

 

showed

 

Paradise

 

instant

 

fortnight

 

flicker

 

practised

 

gravestones

 

beneath


breath

 
searchingly
 

looked

 

rigidity

 

suggest

 
stillness
 

strange

 

closer

 

suddenly

 

weight


leaden

 

released

 

pushed

 

stifled

 

onions

 

exclamation

 
lifted
 

mortality

 

topmost

 

branches