ONE:If I thought Silverdale had the slightest intention of marrying Alice, he said, I shouldnt mind how much he pawed her. But I dont believe he has. Ive a good mind to ask him.
FORE:"They were supported by the government," the Doctor answered, "in accordance with the ancient custom. Every Samurai received an allowance, which was paid to him in rice, the staple article of food, and what he did not eat he could convert into money. His pay was in proportion to his rank, and the great number of Samurai made their support a heavy burden upon the laboring class. It is said that nine tenths of the product of the soil went, in one way and another, for taxes; that is, for every hundred bushels of rice that a farmer raised, ninety bushels went to the local and general governments, and only ten bushels remained to the farmer. It was by being thus saddled on the country that the Samurai[Pg 218] were able to live without work, and, as the right had been conceded to them for generations, they naturally looked with contempt upon all kinds of industry. Their dissipated way of living was very likely to lead them into debt, just as it leads similar men into debt everywhere else. The merchants and tradesmen of all kinds were their victims, as the law allowed no redress for the wrongs they committed. They would sometimes enter a shop, select what goods they wanted, hand them over to a servant, and then leave without paying. If the merchant intimated that he would like to be paid for his property, they became very insolent and threatened to report him to the police as a swindler. They would enter a[Pg 219] tavern or tea-house with a crowd of their followers, and, after eating and drinking what they wished, walk coolly away. If the landlord asked for payment, he was not very likely to get it; and if he repeated the request, he not infrequently had his head slashed off by the sword of one of the offended gentlemen. The head of a landlord was not of much consequence; but he was generally quite unwilling to lose it, as, when once taken off, it was difficult to restore it to its place.
FORE:It was just as Doctor Allingham had congratulated himself upon the fact that the bowling was broken, and that he had only to hit now and save the trouble of running, just as he was scanning the boundaries with one eye and with the other following Tanner's short, crooked arm raised high above the white sheet at the back of the opposite wicket, that he noticed the strange figure. Its abrupt appearance, at first sight like a scare-crow dumped suddenly on the horizon, caused him to lessen his grip upon the bat in his hand. His mind wandered for just that fatal moment, and his vision of the on-coming bowler was swept away and its place taken by that arresting figure of a man coming over the path at the top of the hill, a man whose attitude, on closer examination, seemed extraordinarily like another man in the act of bowling.
