[The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley]@TWC D-Link bookThe Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn CHAPTER XIII 32/42
Good night." Dickson came to him in the morning, and found him in the same mind. They settled down to business, and Hawker made a new will.
He left all his property to his cousin (a man he had had a bitter quarrel with for years), except 100 pounds to his groom, and 200 pounds to Tom Troubridge, "for an act of civility" (so the words ran), "in reading a letter for a man who ought to have been his enemy." And when the will (a very short one) was finished, and the lawyer proposed getting two of his clerks as witnesses, Hawker told him to fold it up and keep it; that he would get it witnessed by-and-by. "You're coming home with me," he said, "and we'll get it witnessed there.
You'll see why, when it's done." Then they went to the manager of the bank, and got him to go before a magistrate with him, whilst he deposed on oath that the two cheques, before mentioned, were forgeries, alleging that his life was so uncertain that the criminal might escape justice by his sudden death. Then he and Dickson went back to the inn, and after dinner started together to drive to Drumston. They had been so engaged with business that they had taken no notice of the weather.
But when they were clear of the northern suburbs of the town, and were flying rapidly along the noble turnpike-road that turning eastward skirts the broad Exe for a couple of miles before turning north again, they remarked that a dense black cloud hung before them, and that everything foreboded a violent thunder-storm. "We shall get a drowning before we reach your place, Hawker," said the lawyer.
"I'm glad I brought my coat." "Lawyers never get drowned," said Hawker, "though I believe you have tried it often enough." When they crossed the bridge, and turned to the north, along the pretty banks of the Creedy, they began to hope that they would leave it on the right; but ere they reached Newton St.Cyres they saw that it was creeping up overhead, and, stopping a few minutes in that village, perceived that the folks were all out at their doors talking to one another, as people do for company's sake when a storm is coming on. Before they got to Crediton they could distinguish, above the sound of the wheels, the thunder groaning and muttering perpetually, and as they rattled quickly past the grand old minster a few drops of rain began to fall. The boys were coming out of the Grammar School in shoals, laughing, running, whooping, as the manner of boys is.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|