Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/86

 'Only waiting,' said Lancelot, 'for the day-star to arise on him and wake him into voice.'

He looked at Honoria as he spoke. She blushed angrily; and yet a sort of sympathy arose from that moment between Lancelot and herself.

Our hero feared he had gone too far, and tried to turn the subject off.

The smooth mill-head was alive with rising trout.

'What a huge fish leapt then!' said Lancelot, carelessly; 'and close to the bridge, too!'

Honoria looked round, and uttered a piercing scream.

'Oh, my dog! my dog! Mops is in the river! That horrid gazelle has butted him in, and he'll be drowned!'

Alas! it was too true. There, a yard above the one open hatchway, through which the whole force of the stream was rushing, was the unhappy Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty Dick, alias Jack Sheppard, paddling, and sneezing, and winking, his little bald muzzle turned piteously upward to the sky.

'He will be drowned!' quoth the colonel.

There was no doubt of it; and so Mops thought, as, shivering and whining, he plied every leg, while the glassy current dragged him back and back, and Honoria sobbed like a child.

The colonel lay down on the bridge, and caught at him his arm was a foot too short. In a moment the huge form of Tregarva plunged solemnly into the water, with a splash like seven salmon, and Mops