She rose and walked into the dining-room.
"Serve breakfast now, Wung," she commanded, and at once the gong was
struck by the cook.
Before the long vibrations had died away the guests were gathered around
the table, and the noisy marshal was the first to come. He slammed back
a chair and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.
"Mornin', Dan," he said, whetting his knife across the table-cloth, "I
hear you're ridin' this mornin'? Ain't going my way, are you?"
Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table. It was a moment
before he answered.
"I ain't leavin," he said softly, at length, "postponed my trip."
CHAPTER XXXIII
DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH
On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was
cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of
old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for
it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre
daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly.
Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now
as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when
the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and
when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every
faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. And like autumn,
too, was the face of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor
pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death.
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