Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/55

 I, with a countenance of the most simple girlishness in the world.

The trembling prisoner burrowed the deeper in the straw.

Now it would have been a perfect piece of comedy, had not that poor lad been breathing so hard and quick behind me. His life was suspended on a hair, and this he knew, and I knew also. Otherwise I should have enjoyed the acting of this play in a fashion that my jaded appetite seldom enjoys anything. Therefore I continued to regard the Captain with a gravely whimsical look; but if he twitched an eyelid, altered the position of a finger, or shifted the altitude an inch at which the lantern hung, I began to speculate upon the fact, and wrote it in my heart. We played a game of cat and mouse, and for once the Captain was the cat. Conceive me the grey and frightened little mouse, trying to dodge the deathly paw that any instant might descend and mutilate it.

"Captain," says I, "are you also interested deeply in the study of astronomy?"

"Astronomy!" cries he, "why astronomy?"

He was a wonderfully clever cat, but trembling little mousie had got him, by her cunning ways, a trifle off his guard you see.

"Why, my dearest man," says I, putting a world of surprise into my tone lest the moonlight should not properly reflect the amount that was inserted in my face, "do you suppose for an instant now that a woman wholly in possession of her wits would quit