of
the crime did not find an excuse for the defendant, I don't know where
he or she would look for an advocate. St. Kevin need not have troubled
himself: there were plenty of people ready to push poor Kathleen down. I
think it is a pity they canonized him.

Through all Guy's reflections there ran this under-current--"how easily
all might have been avoided if the slightest things had turned out
differently." Just so, after a heavy loss at play, a man _will_ keep
thinking how he might have won a large stake if he had played one card
otherwise, or backed the In instead of the Out. I have heard good judges
say that this pertinacious after-thought is the hardest part to bear of
all the annoyance. Of course he worries himself about it, just as if
"great results from small beginnings" were not the tritest of all
truisms. I don't wish to be historical, or I would reflect how often the
Continent has been convulsed by a dish that disagreed with some one, or
by a ship that did not start to its time. The Jacobites were very wise
in toasting "the little gentleman in black velvet" that raised the fatal
mole-hill. Does not the old romance say that an adder starting from a
bush brought on the terrible battle in which all the chivalry of England
were strewn like leaves around Arthur on Barren Down?

Guy could still hardly realize to himself the certainty of Constance's
approaching death. He tried to fix his thoughts on this till a heavy,
listless torpor, like drowsiness, began to steal over him. He roused
himself impatiently, and began to think how slow they were going.
Nevertheless, the green _coteaux_ that swell between Rouen and the sea
were flying past rapidly, and they arrived at Havre, as Mohun had said,
just in time to catch the Southampton packet.

There was threatening of foul weather to windward. The clouds, in masses
of indigo just edged with copper, were banking up fast, and the "white
horses," more and more frequent, were beginning to toss their manes
against the dark sky-line.

To the few travelers whom the stern necessities of business drove forth,
lingering and shivering, from their comfortable inns on to the deck,
already wet and unsteady, Livingstone was an object of great interest
and many theories. His impatience to be gone was so marked that the
conscientious official looked more than once suspiciously at his
passport.

Mr. Phineas Hackett, of Boston, U.S., Marchand (so self-described in
the Livre des Voyageur