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Garman and Worse.
157

which people sometimes are, when they have been dining at their club.

Madeleine tried to pacify her cousin, but it only made him all the worse.

"Just look how lame that one is—the left-hand one!"

"You mean the near one, sir."

"Go to the devil with your near and off! I mean the left-hand one, the mare; both her fore legs are as round as apples. Why, I saw that in the spring."

"Not both of them," answered the old coachman, doggedly.

"Yes, they are; but I will have this looked to. I will have a stop put to it, once for all," said Morten, decidedly. He was just in the humour to take everything very much in earnest.

As soon as they arrived, he scarcely gave himself time to help Madeleine out of the carriage, so anxious was he to examine the mare's fore legs; and she heard the voices disputing and wrangling away in the direction of the stable, as she went into the house.

Madeleine's window looked to the westward, and when she reached her room she found it open. She was going to shut it, but the sea looked so peaceful down below in the clear moonlight, that she knelt down on the window-seat, and remained gazing at the lovely scene. The moon had just reached the point at which it began to shine upon her window, and the shadow fell obliquely from the corner of the house, just beyond the hedge below, thus leaving a triangular space in darkness close underneath. As Madeleine