Then carrying the snuff to his nose, and doffing his hat, with a
satirical sweep of the hand and a low bow, he turned again and
tripped off the ledge into the jaws of the Quick-Boy.
There was no help now. At his third step the sand had him by the
ankles. For a moment he fought it, then, throwing up his arms, sank
forward, slowly and as if bowing yet, upon his face. Second by
second we stood and watched him disappear. Within five minutes the
ripples of the Quick-Boy Sand met once more above him.
In the course of the next afternoon the Vicar of Bleakirk called at
the Hall with a paper which he had found pinned to the church door.
It was evidently a scrap torn from an old letter, and bore, scribbled
in pencil by a clerkly hand, these words: "The young Squire
Cartwright in straits by the foot-bridge, six miles toward
Netherkirk. _Orate pro anima Guliemli Teague_."
II.--THE CONSTANT POST-BOY.
It was a stifling August afternoon. Not a breath of wind came over
the downs, and the sky was just a great flaming oven inverted over
them. I sat down under a dusty gorse-bush (no tree could be seen)
beside the high-road, and tugging off a boot, searched for a prickle
that somehow had got into it. Then, finding myself too hot to pull
the boot on again, I turned out some crumbs of tobacco from a
waistcoat pocket, lit my pipe, and unbuckled my pack.
I "travel" in Tracts, edifying magazines, and books on the Holy Land;
but in Tracts especially.
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