The colonel came down in his usual
urbane smiling way, saying that he had taken the liberty of looking in
upon his dear friend and prisoner, and was rejoiced to find that he had
spent a good night. The captain could be heard descending the staircase,
and telling somebody that he was becalmed again with a spell of foul
weather. The somebody was the Squire, who insisted that thieves had been
through his wardrobe, and then eagerly asked for news from the
encampment. All were shocked beyond measure when they heard of the
terrible tragedy. "I wished the man no good," said the Squire, with a
regretful expression on his manly face, "but, if he had been ten times
the deep dyed villain he was, I couldn't have dreamt of such an awful
fate for him." The captain remarked that in the midst of life we are in
death, that the ways of Providence are mysterious, and that where a man
makes his bed he must lie down, all of which he considered to be good
Scripture and appropriate to the occasion. "Yoah fohce met with no moah
casualties, I hope, Captain Bangs? I do not see our fishing friend, Mr.
Bigglethorpe; is he safe, suh?" These questions led to an account of the
fisherman's heroic attempt to release the self-imprisoned occupants of
the underground passage, of his wounds, and of the subsequent exploits
of the lawyer and the detective.
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