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"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

cubic

How many times the word 'cubic' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

found

How many times the word 'found' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

traitress

How many times the word 'traitress' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

dashed

How many times the word 'dashed' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

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"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

quietly

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"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

except

How many times the word 'except' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

kennels

How many times the word 'kennels' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

three

How many times the word 'three' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

law

How many times the word 'law' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

forgotten

How many times the word 'forgotten' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

about

How many times the word 'about' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

houston

How many times the word 'houston' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

surface

How many times the word 'surface' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

exact

How many times the word 'exact' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

daring

How many times the word 'daring' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

took

How many times the word 'took' appears in the text?

"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

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"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

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"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." "Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme. This is clear enough, I suppose?" As he spoke the professor designedly kept his eyes fixed upon Ben Zoof. He was avowedly following the example of Arago, who was accustomed always in lecturing to watch the countenance of the least intelligent of his audience, and when he felt that he had made his meaning clear to him, he concluded that he must have succeeded with all the rest. In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped. "Read it off!" he said. The weight registered was one hundred and thirty-three grammes. "There, gentlemen, one hundred and thirty-three grammes! Less than one-seventh of a kilogramme! You see, consequently, that the force of gravity here on Gallia is not one-seventh of what it is upon the earth!" "Interesting!" cried Servadac, "most interesting! But let us go on and compute the mass." "No, captain, the density first," said Rosette. "Certainly," said the lieutenant; "for, as we already know the volume, we can determine the mass as soon as we have ascertained the density." The professor took up the cube of rock. "You know what this is," he went on to say. "You know, gentlemen, that this block is a cube hewn from the substance of which everywhere, all throughout your voyage of circumnavigation, you found Gallia to be composed--a substance to which your geological attainments did not suffice to assign a name." "Our curiosity will be gratified," said Servadac, "if you will enlighten our ignorance." But Rosette did not take the slightest notice of the interruption. "A substance it is which no doubt constitutes the sole material of the comet, extending from its surface to its innermost depths. The probability is that it would be so; your experience confirms that probability: you have found no trace of any other substance. Of this rock here is a solid decimeter; let us get at its weight, and we shall have the key which will unlock the problem of the whole weight of Gallia. We have demonstrated that the force of attraction here is only one-seventh of what it is upon the earth, and shall consequently have to multiply the apparent weight of our cube by seven, in order to ascertain its proper weight. Do you understand me, goggle-eyes?" This was addressed to Ben Zoof, who was staring hard at him. "No!" said Ben Zoof. "I thought not; it is of no use waiting for your puzzle-brains to make it out. I must talk to those who can understand." The professor took the cube, and, on attaching it to the hook of the steelyard, found that its apparent weight was one kilogramme and four hundred and thirty grammes. "Here it is, gentlemen; one kilogramme, four hundred and thirty grammes. Multiply that by seven; the product is, as nearly as possible, ten kilogrammes. What, therefore, is our conclusion? Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimeter. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction." The professor could not refrain from exhibiting his gratification that, however inferior in volume, in density, at least, his comet had the advantage over the earth. Nothing further now remained than to apply the investigations thus finished to the determining of the mass or weight. This was a matter of little labor. "Let me see," said the captain; "what is the force of gravity upon the various planets?" "You can't mean, Servadac, that you have forgotten that? But you always were a disappointing pupil." The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him. "Well, then," said the professor, "I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15, on Venus it is 0.92, on Mars 0.5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is 0.16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestrial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes." "Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. A cannon ball, too, would only fly a few yards," said Lieutenant Procope. "A jolly battle-field for cowards!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Not so jolly, Ben Zoof, as you fancy," said his master; "the cowards would be too heavy to run away." Ben Zoof ventured the remark that, as the smallness of Gallia secured to its inhabitants such an increase of strength and agility, he was almost sorry that it had not been a little smaller still. "Though it could not anyhow have been very much smaller," he added, looking slyly at the professor. "Idiot!" exclaimed Rosette. "Your head is too light already; a puff of wind would blow it away." "I must take care of my head, then, and hold it on," replied the irrepressible orderly. Unable to get the last word, the professor was about to retire, when Servadac detained him. "Permit me to ask you one more question," he said. "Can you tell me what is the nature of the soil of Gallia?" "Yes, I can answer that. And in this matter I do not think your impertinent orderly will venture to put Montmartre into the comparison. This soil is of a substance not unknown upon the earth." And speaking very slowly, the professor said: "It contains 70 per cent. of tellurium, and 30 per cent. of gold." Servadac uttered an exclamation of surprise. "And the sum of the specific gravities of these two substances is 10, precisely the number that represents Gallia's density." "A comet of gold!" ejaculated the captain. "Yes; a realization of what the illustrious Maupertuis has already deemed probable," replied the astronomer. "If Gallia, then, should ever become attached to the earth, might it not bring about an important revolution in all monetary affairs?" inquired the count. "No doubt about it!" said Rosette, with manifest satisfaction. "It would supply the world with about 246,000 trillions of francs." "It would make gold about as cheap as dirt, I suppose," said Servadac. The last observation, however, was entirely lost upon the professor, who had left the hall with an air almost majestic, and was already on his way to the observatory. "And what, I wonder, is the use of all these big figures?" said Ben Zoof to his master, when next day they were alone together. "That's just the charm of them, my good fellow," was the captain's cool reply, "that they are of no use whatever." CHAPTER VIII. JUPITER SOMEWHAT CLOSE Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies in solitude. The following day was the 1st of August, or, according to Rosette, the 63rd of April. In the course of this month Gallia would travel 16,500,000 leagues, attaining at the end a distance of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun. This would leave 81,000,000 leagues more to be traversed before reaching the aphelion of the 15th of January, after which it would begin once more to approach the sun. But meanwhile, a marvelous world, never before so close within the range of human vision, was revealing itself. No wonder that Palmyrin Rosette cared so little to quit his observatory; for throughout those calm, clear Gallian nights, when the book of the firmament lay open before him, he could revel in a spectacle which no previous astronomer had ever been permitted to enjoy. The glorious orb that was becoming so conspicuous an object was none other than the planet Jupiter, the largest of all the bodies existing within the influence of solar attraction. During the seven months that had elapsed since its collision with the earth, the comet had been continuously approaching the planet, until the distance between them was scarcely more than 61,000,000 leagues, and this would go on diminishing until the 15th of October. Under these circumstances, was it perfectly certain that no danger could accrue? Was not Gallia, when its pathway led it into such close proximity to this enormous planet, running a risk of being attracted within its influence? Might not that influence be altogether disastrous? The professor, it is true, in his estimate of the duration of his comet's revolution, had represented that he had made all proper allowances for any perturbations that would be caused either by Jupiter, by Saturn, or by Mars; but what if there were any errors in his calculations? what if there should be any elements of disturbance on which he had not reckoned? Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth. The occurrence of any one of these contingencies would be fatal to their hopes of reunion with the globe, from which they had been so strangely severed. To Rosette, who, without family ties which he had never found leisure or inclination to contract, had no shadow of desire to return to the earth, it would be only the first of these probabilities that could give him any concern. Total annihilation might not accord with his views, but he would be quite content for Gallia to miss its mark with regard to the earth, indifferent whether it revolved as a new satellite around Jupiter, or whether it wended its course through the untraversed regions of the milky way. The rest of the community, however, by no means sympathized with the professor's sentiments, and the following month was a period of considerable doubt and anxiety. On the 1st of September the distance between Gallia and Jupiter was precisely the same as the mean distance between the earth and the sun; on the 16th, the distance was further reduced to 26,000,000 leagues. The planet began to assume enormous dimensions, and it almost seemed as if the comet had already been deflected from its elliptical orbit, and was rushing on in a straight line towards the overwhelming luminary. The more they contemplated the character of this gigantic planet, the more they became impressed with the likelihood of a serious perturbation in their own course. The diameter of Jupiter is 85,390 miles, nearly eleven times as great as that of the earth; his volume is 1,387 times, and his mass 300 times greater; and although the mean density is only about a quarter of that of the earth, and only a third of that of water (whence it has been supposed that the superficies of Jupiter is liquid), yet his other proportions were large enough to warrant the apprehension that important disturbances might result from his proximity. "I forget my astronomy, lieutenant," said Servadac. "Tell me all you can about this formidable neighbor." The lieutenant having refreshed his memory by reference to Flammarion's _Recits de l'Infini_, of which he had a Russian translation, and some other books, proceeded to recapitulate that Jupiter accomplishes his revolution round the sun in 4,332 days 14 hours and 2 minutes; that he travels at the rate of 467 miles a minute along an orbit measuring 2,976 millions of miles; and that his rotation on his axis occupies only 9 hours and 55 minutes. "His days, then, are shorter than ours?" interrupted the captain. "Considerably," answered the lieutenant, who went on to describe how the displacement of a point at the equator of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth, causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis, being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable; and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth, the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles. "And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac. Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one is rather smaller than our own moon; that another moves round its primary at an interval about equal to the moon's distance from ourselves; but that they all revolve in considerably less time: the first takes only l day 18 hours 27 minutes; the second takes 3 days 13 hours 14 minutes; the third, 7 days 3 hours 42 minutes; whilst the largest of all takes but 16 days 16 hours 32 minutes. The most remote revolves round the planet at a distance of 1,192,820 miles. "They have been enlisted into the service of science," said Procope. "It is by their movements that the velocity of light has been calculated; and they have been made available for the determination of terrestrial longitudes." "It must be a wonderful sight," said the captain. "Yes," answered Procope. "I often think Jupiter is like a prodigious clock with four hands." "I only hope that we are not destined to make a fifth hand," answered Servadac. Such was the style of the conversation that was day by day reiterated during the whole month of suspense. Whatever topic might be started, it seemed soon to settle down upon the huge orb that was looming upon them with such threatening aspect. "The more remote that these planets are from the sun," said Procope, "the more venerable and advanced in formation are they found to be. Neptune, situated 2,746,271,000 miles from the sun, issued from the solar nebulosity, thousands of millions of centuries back. Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles. The earth, 91,430,000 miles from the sun, quitted his burning bosom 100,000,000 years ago. Venus, revolving now 66,131,000 miles away, may be assigned the age of 50,000,000 years at least; and Mercury, nearest of all, and youngest of all, has been revolving at a distance of 35,393,000 miles for the space of 10,000,000 years--the same time as the moon has been evolved from the earth." Servadac listened attentively. He was at a loss what to say; and the only reply he made to the recital of this novel theory was to the effect that, if it were true, he would prefer being captured by Mercury than by Jupiter, for Mercury, being so much the younger, would probably prove the less imperative and self-willed master. It was on the 1st of September that the comet had crossed the orbit of Jupiter, and on the 1st of October the two bodies were calculated to be at their minimum separation. No direct shock, however, could be apprehended; the demonstration was sufficiently complete that the orbit of Gallia did not coincide with that of the planet, the orbit of Jupiter being inclined at an angle of 1 degrees 19 mins to the orbit of the earth, with which that of Gallia was, no doubt, coincident. As the month of September verged towards its close, Jupiter began to wear an aspect that must have excited the admiration of the most ignorant or the most indifferent observer. Its salient points were illumined with novel and radiant tints, and the solar rays, reflected from its disc, glowed with a mingled softness and intensity upon Gallia, so that Nerina had to pale her beauty. Who could wonder that Rosette, enthusiast as he was, should be irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? Meanwhile, as Jupiter grew large, the sun grew small. From its increased remoteness the diameter of the sun's disc was diminished to 5 degrees 46 mins. And what an increased interest began to be associated with the satellites! They were visible to the naked eye! Was it not a new record in the annals of science? Although it is acknowledged that they are not ordinarily visible on earth without the aid of a somewhat powerful telescope, it has been asserted that a favored few, endued with extraordinary powers of vision, have been able to identify them with an unassisted eye; but here, at least, in Nina's Hive were many rivals, for everyone could so far distinguish them one from the other as to describe them by their colors. The first was of a dull white shade; the second was blue; the third was white and brilliant; the fourth was orange, at times approaching to a red. It was further observed that Jupiter itself was almost void of scintillation. Rosette, in his absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some serious collision might be impending. Time passed on. There was nothing to justify apprehension. The question was continually being asked, "What does the professor really think?" "Our friend the professor," said Servadac, "is not likely to tell us very much; but we may feel pretty certain of one thing: he wouldn't keep us long in the dark, if he thought we were not going back to the earth again. The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had parted from the earth for ever." "I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his prognostications are correct." "The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac, "the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular." Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something on my mind," he said. "Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain. "That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us." The captain laughed heartily. "Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms." "Ben Zoof," said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, "touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!" The orderly looked astonished. "I am governor here," said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master's wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter's equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet's superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer's power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette's lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. "Only let us escape Jupiter," said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, "and we are free from anxiety." "But would not Saturn lie ahead?" asked Servadac and the count in one breath. "No!" said Procope; "the orbit of Saturn is remote, and does not come athwart our path. Jupiter is our sole hindrance. Of Jupiter we must say, as William Tell said, 'Once through the ominous pass and all is well.'" The 15th of October came, the date of the nearest approximation of the comet to the planet. They were only 31,000,000 miles apart. What would now transpire? Would Gallia be diverted from its proper way? or would it hold the course that the astronomer had predicted? Early next morning the captain ventured to take the count and the lieutenant up to the observatory. The professor was in the worst of tempers. That was enough. It was enough, without a word, to indicate the course which events had taken. The comet was pursuing an unaltered way. The astronomer, correct in his prognostications, ought to have been the most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come into collision with the earth. CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA "All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!" "And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his

respectively

How many times the word 'respectively' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

crowned

How many times the word 'crowned' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

pleasure

How many times the word 'pleasure' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

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"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

attitude

How many times the word 'attitude' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

reason

How many times the word 'reason' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

happen

How many times the word 'happen' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

name

How many times the word 'name' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

extraordinary

How many times the word 'extraordinary' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

invisible

How many times the word 'invisible' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

see

How many times the word 'see' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

enlarging

How many times the word 'enlarging' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

piteously

How many times the word 'piteously' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

look

How many times the word 'look' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

private

How many times the word 'private' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

cheerfully

How many times the word 'cheerfully' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

present

How many times the word 'present' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

expenses

How many times the word 'expenses' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

shame----

How many times the word 'shame----' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

portable

How many times the word 'portable' appears in the text?

"Not personally," said I. The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars. "The house with the bow-window," said Wemmick, "being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is--ready." Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. "Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,--whichever it may be,--you and I don't want to know,--quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on. "And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,--from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal capacity,--I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,--which is another reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip"; his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property." Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. "Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,--he'll be up presently,--and a little bit of--you remember the pig?" "Of course," said I. "Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!" in a cheery shout. "All right, John; all right, my boy!" piped the old man from within. I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. Chapter XLVI Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk. It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,--whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. "All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. "I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." "At rum?" said I. "Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's shop." While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away. "What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand--and everywhere else--can't expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself." He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar. "To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?" It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean. "Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." "Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" "No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself or anybody else about her family!" Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as "Clara." She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service. "Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; "here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!" There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling!" and ran away. "There is an unconscionable old shark for you!" said Herbert. "What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" "I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" "That's it!" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he goes!" Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, "he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, "he's down again on his back!" Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something quite the reverse:-- "Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you." In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened,--indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly. The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? "Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." "Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good help. Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first." I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right. Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye!" "Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we may meet again, and I don't like good-bye. Say good night!" "Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!" We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now. Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside when he came in,--for I went straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued,--made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour. Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. Chapter XLVII Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I did. My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself. As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own last year, last month, last week? It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,--for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could. There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house, where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play. There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honor, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle, conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, surveying the public with a discontented

upper

How many times the word 'upper' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

detail

How many times the word 'detail' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

burst

How many times the word 'burst' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

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"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

seas

How many times the word 'seas' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

herbert

How many times the word 'herbert' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

fellow

How many times the word 'fellow' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

lumps

How many times the word 'lumps' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

maids

How many times the word 'maids' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

derive

How many times the word 'derive' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

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How many times the word 'dark' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

treat

How many times the word 'treat' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

lunacy

How many times the word 'lunacy' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

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"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

salary

How many times the word 'salary' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

refrained

How many times the word 'refrained' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

suit

How many times the word 'suit' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

pencil

How many times the word 'pencil' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

swearing

How many times the word 'swearing' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

lily

How many times the word 'lily' appears in the text?

"Old ones!" "Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did." It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called "The Road." "I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good black suit. And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem's sake? He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew. "But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me." "Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. "In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--" I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. "I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. "'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.' "He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. "'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.' "'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.' "'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic? Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?' "Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly. 'The ONLY Editor.' "'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed. "'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?' "'Gimme yer card,' says he. "'My what?' "'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?' "And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. "'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware lest I knock too loud.' "'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered. "Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. "'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath. "'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.' "'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.' "'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'" Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. "Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen. "However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly. "'You are a very busy man,' I said. "He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. "'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--' "'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. "'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.' "'What the hell--?' "'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious--' "'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?' "'I want money.' "He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.' "'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?' "I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do business with me. "'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?' "And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. "'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door. "And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. "The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce, eh?' "'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and then I'll make you jump.' "And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close." "But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?" Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem--" "But the local color?" I prodded him. "That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen. "From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince. "One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color. "Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: "'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.' "Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or 'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes. "'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift gait you strike, my man.' "I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. "'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked. "'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment. "'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?' "'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.' "'Save John Law,' he chuckled. "'Save John Law,' said I. "'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded abruptly. "'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play.' "He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one. "'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.' "But I shook my head. "'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy till it gets you. What say?' "In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up. "'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.' "I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it. "'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after publication.' "'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--' "He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?' "'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.' "And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?--oh, departed. "'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.' "I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. "'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled. "'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow perfect. But you must take it.' "He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged. "'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them. "'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by the circumstance. "'It stands to reason,' said I. "'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered. "'Nonsense!' "'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.' "'Pshaw!' "And stop he did, between floors. "'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man, young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.' "It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me. "I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder: "'Hello, Cinders! Which way?' "It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname. "'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?' "'Bum. Bulls is horstile.' "'Where's the push?' "'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.' "'Who's the main guy?' "'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'" The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner." "Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction. "Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream. "'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.' "All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. "All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. "'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. "'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim sat down. "And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb! "Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.' "I shook my head. "'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.' "'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called. "I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled. "'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor remarked sweetly. "It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. "'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted. "'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. "'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my occupation.' "'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this...t his judge you have depicted... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?' "'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.' "'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued. "'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained. "'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?' "'No, your Honor.' "'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?' "'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.' "'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?' "'Thirty dollars, your Honor.' "'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.' "'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.' "'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.' "'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk. "Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!'" Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--" "Yes," I said absently; "yes." AMATEUR NIGHT The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things. But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. "And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--" "But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?" "They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make yourself indispensable." "But how can I, if I do not get the chance?" "Make your chance." "But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. "How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism." She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

clay

How many times the word 'clay' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

notice

How many times the word 'notice' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

chance

How many times the word 'chance' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

encourage

How many times the word 'encourage' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

nigel

How many times the word 'nigel' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

pretty

How many times the word 'pretty' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

amidst

How many times the word 'amidst' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

great

How many times the word 'great' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

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"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

proof

How many times the word 'proof' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

still

How many times the word 'still' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

this

How many times the word 'this' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

exposure

How many times the word 'exposure' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

sunset

How many times the word 'sunset' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

unbalanced

How many times the word 'unbalanced' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

depend

How many times the word 'depend' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

lying

How many times the word 'lying' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

appealing

How many times the word 'appealing' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

seas

How many times the word 'seas' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

go

How many times the word 'go' appears in the text?

"Sure it's more like a ghost the doctor is, in spite of his larfin'. But wonders 'll niver cease. I'll lave 'im wid an aisy mind, for he's in good hands. Now, Joe, clear out o' the door, like a good man, an' let me through. They'll be wantin' me at the camp. A good haul, Joe, I'm tough; no fear o' me comin' to pieces. Och! but it's a poor cabin. An Irish pig wouldn't thank ye for it." Murmuring similar uncomplimentary remarks, mingled with expressions of surprise, the voice of the woman gradually died away, and the people in the golden cave were left to discuss their situation and form hasty plans for the present emergency. At first, of course, they could do little else than make each other partially acquainted with the circumstances which had so strangely thrown them together, but Dominick soon put an end to this desultory talk. "You see, it will take all our time," he said, "between this and sunset to get the emigrants comfortably under canvas, or some sort of shelter." "True," assented Dr Marsh, "and it would never do with so many women and children, some of whom are on the sick list, to leave them to the risk of exposure to another storm like that which has just passed. Is your island subject to such?" "By no means," answered Dominick. "It has a splendid climate. This gale is quite exceptional. Nevertheless, we cannot tell when the next may burst on us. Come, Otto, you and I will go down to the camp. Now, Dr Marsh, you must remain here. I can see, without being told, that you are quite unfit to help us. I know that it is hard to be condemned to inaction when all around are busy, but reflect how many patients you have solemnly warned that their recovery would depend on implicit obedience to the doctor's orders! Divide yourself in two, now, and, as a doctor, give yourself strict orders to remain quiet." "H'm! Gladly would I divide myself," was the doctor's reply, "if while I left the patient half to act the invalid, I could take the impatient half down to the camp to aid you. But I submit. The days of my once boasted strength are gone. I feel more helpless than a mouse." There was something quite pitiful in the half-humorous look, and the weary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying behind and taking care of him. "Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_ be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?" Otto humbly admitted that she was. Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but, being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing. It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water, as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds, but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular. In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man. In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch, who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic, sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it. Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself extremely useful. About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band, and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks, Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner, which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them. "What a day we have had, to be sure!" said Dominick as they walked along; "and I'm as hungry as a kangaroo." Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals, Otto declared that he was in the same condition, "if not more so." On opening the door they were checked by the expression of Pauline's face, the speaking eyes of which, and the silent mouth, were concentrated into an unmistakable "hush!"--which was emphasised by a significant forefinger. "What's wrong?" whispered Dominick, anxiously. "Sleeping," murmured Pauline--she was too good a nurse to whisper-- pointing to the invalid, who, overcome with the night's exposure and the morning's excitement, had fallen into a profound slumber on Otto's humble couch. This was a rather severe and unexpected trial to Otto, who had come up to the cave brimming over with camp news for Pauline's benefit. He felt that it was next to impossible to relate in a whisper all the doings and sayings, comical and otherwise, that he had seen and heard that day. To eat his dinner and say nothing seemed equally impossible. To awaken the wearied sleeper was out of the question. However, there was nothing for it but to address himself to the suppression of his feelings. Probably it was good for him to be thus self-disciplined; certainly it was painful. He suffered chiefly at the top of the nose--inside behind his eyes--that being the part of the safety-valve where bursts of laughter were checked; and more than once, while engaged in a whispering commentary on the amiable widow Lynch, the convulsions within bade fair to blow the nasal organ off his face altogether. Laughter is catching. Pauline and Dominick, ere long, began to wish that Otto would hold his tongue. At last, some eccentricity of Joe Binney, or his brother, or Mrs Lynch, we forget which, raised the pressure to such a pitch that the safety-valves of all three became ineffective. They all exploded in unison, and poor Marsh was brought to consciousness, surprise, and a sitting posture at the same instant. "I'm afraid," he said, rather sheepishly, "that I've been sleeping." "You have, doctor, and a right good sleep you've had," said Dominick, rising and placing a stool for the invalid. "We ought to apologise for disturbing you; but come, sit down and dine. You must be hungry by this time." "Indeed I am. The land air seems to have had a powerful effect on me already." "Truly it must," remarked Pauline, "else you could not have fallen asleep in the very middle of my glowing description of our island home." "Did I really do that?" said the doctor, with an air of self-reproach. "Indeed you did; but in the circumstances you are to be excused." "And I hope," added Dominick, "that you'll have many a good sleep in our golden cave." "Golden cave, indeed," echoed the invalid, in thought, for his mind was too much taken up just then with Pauline to find vent in speech. "A golden cave it will be to me for evermore!" It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible--in short, an absolute woman-hater--had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen--nay, let us be just--had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in--sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. But of this mighty upheaval and overturning of his sentiments he betrayed no symptom whatever, excepting two bright spots--one on either cheek--which might easily have been mistaken for the effects of weakness, or recent excitement, or bad health, or returning hunger. Calmly he set to work on the viands before him with unusual appetite, conversing earnestly, meanwhile, with Dominick and Otto on the gravity of their situation, and bestowing no more attention upon Pauline than was barely consistent with good breeding, insomuch that that pretty young creature began to feel somewhat aggrieved. Considering all the care she had so recently bestowed on him, she came to the conclusion, in short, that he was by no means as polite as at first she had supposed him to be. By degrees the conversation about the present began to give place to discussions as to the future, and when Dominick and Otto returned for their evening meal at sunset, bringing with them Mr Malines, the mate, and Joe Binney and his brother David and Hugh Morris as being representative men of the emigrants and ship's crew, the meeting resolved itself into a regular debating society. At this point Pauline deserted them and went down to the camp to cultivate the acquaintance of the widow Lynch, Mrs Welsh, and the other female and infantine members of the wrecked party. "For my part," said Malines, "I shall take one o' the boats, launch it in the lagoon, and go over to the big island, follow me who may, for it is clear that there's not room for us all on this strip of sand." "I don't see that," objected Hugh Morris. "Seems to me as there's space enough for all of us, if we're not too greedy." "That shows ye knows nothin' about land, Hugh," said Joe Binney. "What's of it here is not only too little, but too sandy. I votes for the big island." "So does I," said David Binney. "Big Island for me." Thus, incidentally, was the large island named. "But," said Hugh, still objecting, "it won't be half so convenient to git things out o' the wreck, as where we are." "Pooh! that's nothing," said Malines. "It won't cost us much trouble to carry all we want across a spit of sand." Seeing that the two men were getting angry with each other, Dominick interposed by blandly stating that he knew well the capabilities of the spot on which they were encamped, and he was sure that such a party would require more ground if they meant to settle on it. "Well now, master," observed Joe, with a half-laugh, "we don't 'zactly mean for to settle on it, but here we be, an' here we must be, till a ship takes us off, an' we can't afford to starve, 'ee know, so we'll just plough the land an' plant our seed, an' hope for good weather an' heavy crops; so I says Big Island!" "An' so says I--Big Island for ever!" repeated his brother David. After a good deal more talk and altercation this was finally agreed to, and the meeting dissolved itself. That night, at the darkest hour, another meeting was held in the darkest spot that could be found near the camp. It chanced, unknown to the meeting, to be the burial-ground at first discovered by the Rigondas. Unwittingly, for it was very dark, Hugh Morris seated himself on one of the old graves, and about thirty like-minded men gathered round him. Little did they know that Otto was one of the party! Our little hero, being sharp eyed and eared, had seen and overheard enough in the camp that day to induce him to watch Morris after he left the cave, and follow him to the rendezvous. "My lads," said Morris, "I've done my best to keep them to the reef, but that blackguard Malines won't hear of it. He's bent on takin' 'em all to the big island, so they're sure to go, and we won't get the help o' the other men: but no matter; wi' blocks an' tackle we'll do it ourselves, so we can afford to remain quiet till our opportunity comes. I'm quite sure the ship lays in such a position that we can get her over the ledge into deep water, and so be able to draw round into the open sea, and then--" "Hurrah for the black flag and the southern seas," cried one of the party. "No, no, Jabez Jenkins," said Morris, "we don't mean to be pirates; only free rovers." "Hallo! what's this?" exclaimed another of the party. "A cross, I do believe! and this mound--why, it's a grave!" "And here's another one!" said Jabez, in a hoarse whisper. "Seems to me we've got into a cannibal churchyard, or--" "Bo-o-o-o-oo!" groaned Otto at that moment, in the most horribly sepulchral tone he could command. Nothing more was wanted. With one consent the conspirators leapt up and fled from the dreadful spot in a frenzy of unutterable consternation. CHAPTER SEVEN. TREATS OF BIG ISLAND--A GREAT FIGHT AND A ROYAL FAMILY. "Dominick," said Otto, next morning, after having solemnly and somewhat mysteriously led his brother to the old burial-ground, "would you believe me if I told you that last night, when you and the like of you were sound asleep, not to say snoring, I saw some twenty or thirty men fly from this spot like maniacs at the howling of a ghost?" "No, I would not believe you," answered Dominick, with a bland smile. "Would you not believe me if I told you that _I_ was the ghost and that Hugh Morris was the ringleader of the cowards?" "Come, Otto, be sensible and explain." Otto became sensible and explained. Thereupon Dominick became serious, and said "Oho!" To which Otto replied "Just so," after which they became meditative. Then Dominick linked his arm in that of his little brother, and, leading him off to a well-known and sequestered walk, entered into an earnest confabulation. With the details of that confabulation we will not trouble the reader. We will only repeat the concluding sentences. "Well, then, Dom, it's agreed on, that we are to go on as if we knew nothing about this matter, and take no notice of it whatever to any one--not even to Pina." "Yes, Otto, that's it. Of course I don't like to have any sort of secret from Pina, but it would be cruel in us to fill her mind with alarm for no good purpose. No--mum's the word. Take no notice whatever. Morris may repent. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or the hope." "Very well, Dom, mum shall be the word." Having thus for the time being disposed of a troublesome subject, the brothers returned to the place where the emigrants were encamped. Here all was wild confusion and harmony. Lest this should appear contradictory, we must explain that the confusion was only physical, and addressed to the eye. The emigrants, who were busy as ants, had already disembarked large quantities of their goods, which were scattered about in various heaps between the landing-place and the encampment. The harmony, on the other hand, was mental and spiritual, for as yet there had been no time for conflicting interests to arise, and the people were all so busy that they had not leisure to disagree. Besides, the weather being splendidly bright and warm was conducive to good-humour. It will be remembered also that Hugh Morris and his friends had resolved to remain quiet for the present. Perhaps the effect of the ghostly visitation might have had some influence in restraining their turbulent spirits. At all events, be this as it may, when Dominick and Otto came upon the scene everything was progressing pleasantly. The male emigrants were running between the beach and the camp with heavy burdens on their shoulders. The females were busy washing and mending garments, which stood sorely in need of their attention, or tending the sick and what Otto styled the infantry. The sailors were engaged, some in transporting goods from the wreck to the shore, others in piloting two of the large boats through the reef into the lagoon, and the larger children were romping joyously in the thickets and trying to climb the cocoa-nut trees, while the smaller fry were rolling helplessly on the sands--watched, more or less, by mothers and big sisters. Chief among those who piloted the large boats through the passage in the reef was Hugh Morris. He took careful observations and soundings as he went along, not that such were needed for the safety of the boats, but Hugh Morris had an eye to the ultimate destiny of the ship. "You're mighty particular, Morris," said Malines, with something of a sneer in his tone, when the former drew up his boat inside the reef beside the other boat. "One would think you were piloting a man-of-war through instead of a little boat." "What I was doin' is none o' your business, Malines," returned Hugh, sternly. "Your command ceased when you lost your ship, and I ain't agoin' to obey your orders; no, nor take any of your cheek." "The emigrants chose to accept me as their commander, at least for the present," retorted Malines, fiercely. To this Hugh replied, with a laugh of scorn, that the emigrants might make a commander of the ship's monkey for all that he cared, the emigrants were not _his_ masters, and he would do exactly as he pleased. As a number of his followers echoed the scornful laugh, Malines felt that he had not the power to carry things with a high hand. "Well, well," he returned, in a tone of quiet indifference, "we shall see. It is quite clear to every one with a grain of sense that people can't live comfortably under two masters; the people will have to decide that matter for themselves before long." "Ay, that will they, master," remarked Joe Binney, in a low but significant voice. "Seems to me, however, that as we're all agreed about goin' over to Big Island, we'd better go about it an' leave disputation till afterwards." Agreeing to this in silence, the men set about loading the boats for the first trip. Dominick and Otto, standing on the beach, had witnessed this altercation. "The seeds of much dissension and future trouble are there," remarked the former. "Unless we prevent the growth of the seed," said Otto. "True, but how that is to be done does not appear obvious at present. These men have strong wills and powerful frames, and each has a large following, I can see that. We must hope that among the emigrants there may be good and strong men enough to keep the crew in check." "Luckily two of the biggest and stoutest are also the most sensible," said Otto. "You mean the brothers Binney?" "Yes, Dom. They're first-rate men, don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly; but very ignorant, and evidently unaccustomed to lead or command men." "What a pity," exclaimed the boy, with a flush of sudden inspiration, "that we couldn't make you king of the island! You're nearly as strong as the best of them, and much cleverer." Dominick received this compliment with a laugh and a shake of the head. "No, my boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that `the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set down as idlers. Come, let us lend a helping hand." While the men were busy at the boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's influence quickly made itself felt. Mrs Lynch said she was a jewel, and that was extraordinary praise from the strapping widow, who seldom complimented her sex, whatever she may have felt. Mrs Welsh said she was a "dear, pritty creetur'," and laughter-loving little Mrs Nobbs, the wife of a jovial harum-scarum blacksmith, pronounced her a "perfect darling." As for the children, after one hour's acquaintance they adored her, and would have "bored her to death" had that been possible. What the men thought of her we cannot tell, for they spake not, but furtively stared at her in a sort of reverential amazement, and some of them, in a state of mild enthusiasm, gave murmured utterance to the sentence quoted above, "Blessed simplicity!" for Pauline Rigonda was, at first, utterly unaware of the sensation she created. When the two boats were loaded down to the gunwales, a select party of men embarked and rowed them over the calm lagoon to Big Island. Of course they were well armed, for no one could tell what they might meet with there. Dominick and Otto were of the party, and, being regarded in some measure as owners of the soil, the former was tacitly recognised as leader on this their first visit. The distance they had to row was not more than a quarter of a mile, so the lagoon was soon crossed. The spot at which they landed was a beautiful little bay with bush-topped cliffs on one side, a thicket of luxuriant plants on the other, and palm groves rising to a moderate height behind. The little beach on which they ran the boats was of pure white sand, which induced one of them to name it Silver Bay. Jumping out, Dominick, with a dozen armed men, advanced into the bushes with caution. "Nothing to be seen here of either friends or foes," he said, halting. "I felt sure that we should find no one, and it is of no use taking so many of you from work; therefore, lads, I would advise your returning to the boats and going to work at once. My little brother and I will ascend to the top of the cliff there, from which we will be able to see all the neighbouring country, and give you timely warning should any natives appear. Pile your rifles on the beach, so as to have them handy; but you've nothing to fear." In a few minutes Dominick and his brother, each carrying a rifle and cutlass supplied by the wrecked party, had mounted to the top of the neighbouring cliff, while the men returned to aid in unloading the boats. "What a splendid island!" exclaimed Otto, with intense delight, as, from the lofty outlook, they gazed down upon a scene of the richest beauty. From their position on the reef they had hitherto seen the island through the softening atmosphere of distance, like a rounded mass of verdure; but in this case distance had _not_ "lent enchantment to the view," for, now that they beheld it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality--such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, with its laurel-shaped leaves; the imposing hutu-tree, with foliage resembling the magnolia and its large white flowers, the petals of which are edged with bright pink;--these and many others, with the feathery palm and several kinds of mimosa lining the seashore, presented a display of form and colour such as the brothers had not up to that time even dreamed of. While Otto gazed in silent wonder and admiration, he was surprised to hear Dominick give vent to a sigh, and shake his head. "Dom!" he said, remonstratively, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the place is such a paradise that the emigrants won't want to leave it, and that will interfere with a little plan which had begun to form itself in my brain of late. I had been thinking that among so many tradesmen I should find men to help me to break up the wreck, and, out of the materials, to build a small vessel, with which to leave the island--for, to tell you the truth, Otto, I have begun to fear that this place lies so far out of the track of ships that we may be left on it for many years like the mutineers of Pitcairn Island." "Humph! I'm sorry you're growing tired of it already," said Otto; "I thought you had more o' the spirit of Robinson Crusoe in you, Dom, and I never heard of the mutineers of Pitcairn Island; but if--" "What! did you never hear of the mutineers of the _Bounty_?" "Never. My education, you know, has been neglected." "Then I'll tell you the story some time or other. It's too long to begin just now, but it beats that of your favourite Robinson out of sight in my opinion." Otto shook his head in grave unbelief. "That," he said, "is impossible. But as to this island proving so attractive, don't you think that such fellows as Hugh Morris and Malines will take care to prevent it becoming too much of a paradise?" Dominick laughingly admitted that there was something in that--and he was right. There was even more in that than he had imagined, for the party had not been a week in their new home when they began to differ as to the division of the island. That old, old story of mighty men desiring to take possession of the land and push their weaker brethren to the wall soon began to be re-enacted on this gem of the ocean, and bade fair to convert the paradise--like the celebrated Monte Carlo--into a magnificent pandemonium. At one of their stormy meetings, of which the settlers had many, the brothers Binney and Dominick were present. It was held on the shores of Silver Bay, where the first boat-loads had been discharged, and around which quite a village of rude huts had sprung up like mushrooms. From those disputatious assemblies most of the women absented themselves, but the widow Lynch always remained, holding herself in reserve for any emergency, for she was well aware that her opinion carried much weight with many of the party. "We're a rough lot, and would need tight handlin'," whispered the little man named Redding to Joe Binney, who sat on a bank beside him. "The handlin' will be tight enough before long," returned Joe, with a decided little nod. "Listen, the worst o' the lot's agoin' to spout." This last remark had reference to Malines, who had just risen to reply to a fiery little man named Buxley, a tailor by trade, who was possessed not only of good reasoning power but great animal courage, as he had proved on more than one occasion on the voyage out. "Friends," said the mate, "it's all very well for Buxley to talk about fair play, and equal rights, etcetera, but, I ask, would it be fair play to give each of us an equal portion of land, when it's quite clear that some--like Joe Binney there--could cultivate twice as much as his share, while a creature like Buxley--" "No more a creature than yourself!" shouted the little tailor. "Could only work up half his lot--if even so much," continued the mate, regardless of the interruption. "Hear, hear!" from those who sympathised with Malines. "An' what could _you_ do with land?" demanded Buxley in a tone of scorn, "a man that's ploughed nothing but salt water all his life." This was greeted with a laugh and "That's so." "He's only sowed wild oats as yet." "Pitch into him, Buckie." Malines was fast losing temper under the little man's caustic remarks, but succeeded in restraining himself, and went on:-- "It's quite plain that the island is too small to let every man have an equal bit of land, so I propose that it should be divided among those who have strength and knowledge to work it, and--" "_You_ ain't one o' them," shouted the irate tailor. "Come,

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"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

washed

How many times the word 'washed' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

origins

How many times the word 'origins' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

beautiful

How many times the word 'beautiful' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

shrunk

How many times the word 'shrunk' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

throws

How many times the word 'throws' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

title

How many times the word 'title' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

their

How many times the word 'their' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

test

How many times the word 'test' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

hire

How many times the word 'hire' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

weeks

How many times the word 'weeks' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

picture

How many times the word 'picture' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

give

How many times the word 'give' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

vinegar

How many times the word 'vinegar' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

stare

How many times the word 'stare' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

rivers

How many times the word 'rivers' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

uncle

How many times the word 'uncle' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

instead

How many times the word 'instead' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

right

How many times the word 'right' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

almighty--

How many times the word 'almighty--' appears in the text?

"The Haunting", production draft, revised by Michael Tolkin THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE By David Self Revisions by Michael Tolkin Based on the Novel by Shirley Jackson 11/10/98 Initial Shooting Script NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPT CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS. THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY. BEGIN MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE. At the very edge of hearing, the tone of human VOICES. Unintelligible, babbling, eerie. Then a loud FLAPPING SOUND. It shifts from one side of the theater to the other, like something moving among the wall hangings. As the TITLE appears, the noise mounts, drowning out the VOICES, agitated, becoming violent, banging... inhuman. FADE IN: EXT. HOUSING PROJECT, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS - DAY ON a housing project in the industrial outskirts of Boston. The BANGING seems to flutter away, leading us along, searching... to a tiny balcony, one of dozens, ten stories up. And there, the source of the sound -- -- A SHEET, snapping in the wind. The umbrella-like clothes line on which it hangs bangs against a dirty glass door as if trying to get in. THROUGH THE GLASS DOOR a woman paces inside, agitated. The VOICES rise over the banging, becoming intelligible -- INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY -- becoming a fight. JANE, 30s, dark-haired, furious, wheels across a diminutive, neat, but poor living room. JANE It'll take a month to probate the will, Nell! A month! Even if Mother left you something, you won't get it in time to pay the rent. So instead of complaining, you should be thanking Lou for getting you these two weeks to get Mother's things packed. At first we can't even see who she's yelling at. At first we don't even notice her. Then we do... Holding herself, in a dim corner away from the light, small, plain, like a part of the faded room is ELEANOR VANCE, 20's -- Nell. She stares at the door. The clothes line raps at the begrimed glass. JANE (cont'd) Nell? The wind dies, the banging stops. Nell seems to hear Jane and peers over at her, then across the room to Jane's bored husband, LOU. He's turning a Franklin Mint commemorative coin set in his hands, studying it. LOU You're still going to have to settle with your mother's landlord on the back rent. Nell watches Jane's little boy, RICHIE. Unpacified by the cartoons on the TV, he plows a plastic tank across a shelf through neat rows of delicate PORCELAIN DOLLS. NELL I'm not going to stay. I'll get a job. I'll get my own apartment. Richie knocks a porcelain DOLL off, and it breaks all over the carpet. His parents don't notice. But Nell feels it in the soul. Richie stops. A long beat. He looks at her, insolent, then plows on with his tank. JANE Nell. A job? Two months and where is this job? You have no degree, you've never worked -- Nell explodes in outraged fury, startling us. NELL -- I've never worked? -- JANE You have no experience in the world... the regular world. What would you put on a resume? (beat, softening) Now we all appreciate what you did for Mother. Isn't that right, Lou? LOU Eleven years. Long time. JANE That's why we've been talking. With me getting more time in Accessories, and Lou at the shop all day, we need somebody to take care of Richie, do a little cleaning and cooking. And in return you can have the extra room. She goes to Lou, puts a hand on his shoulder, proud of her generosity. All Nell can do is stare. And then: KNOCK KNOCK. Like a shot Nell is out of the chair and turning for a set of FRENCH DOORS across the room. It's all reflex. Nell catches herself. KNOCK KNOCK. Richie, lying on the couch like he's sick, raps on the wall with a wooden CANE and squeals: RICHIE Eleanor, help me! I've got to pee! Nell REACTS, but rather than being amused or annoyed, a wave of TRAUMA flickers over her face. The reaction is so strong we instantly know something is very wrong. LOU Richie, knock it off before I beat the crap out of you! Nell turns away, sick, breathing hard. Jane picks up a JEWELRY BOX from a dresser. JANE You're sure this is all of Mother's jewelry? The lawyer said to make sure we took it to him... (beat) He said there might be some antique pieces. Have you seen anything? Some of it might be valuable. Nell knows what is going to happen to that jewelry. Jane no longer can bear the weight of Nell's stare, checks her watch. She nods at Lou. Lou rises, pocketing the coin set. Richie follows him out. JANE (cont'd) Think about our offer, Nell. You don't know how hard it is out there. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell rams through the door into the small kitchen, spotless, empty. And then bursts into tears. Shaking, she digs in her back pocket and pulls out a FINE FILIGREE NECKLACE. Her mother's. It's from an age gone by. Clutching the necklace, she goes back out the door. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell crosses the living room straight for the closed French doors, the glass obscured by gauze curtains. She throws them open and enters -- INT. SICK ROOM - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- what once was a dining room. Transformed into a sick room. Drawn shades. Dim. The first traces of dust. Nell lingers in the doorway a beat, daunted. A perfectly made bed. The PILLOW, however retains the IMPRESSION of a head. Lodged between the bed and a nightstand, a CANE. On the opposite side of the bed is a plastic toilet. I.V. stand. Shrouded white shapes. On the wall above the bed, a framed needlepoint counsels: A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE. A bit of wisdom. A way to live a life. A way Nell has lived for too long. Seeing it galvanizes her into movement. She goes to an old armoire, a medicine chest, opens it, removes a BOTTLE OF TYLENOL WITH CODEINE and marches out. INT. LIVING ROOM, NELL'S APARTMENT - DAY Nell closes the doors on the chamber of horrors, exhales. She has been holding her breath. INT. NELL'S KITCHEN - DAY Nell sits at her tiny kitchen table, water glass and Tylenol in front of her. The necklace dangles from her fingers. She stares, mesmerized by it. Then she undoes the hasp. The clothes line outside BATTERS louder -- -- and, defiant, Nell puts the necklace on. She closes her eyes. Silence. The battering has stopped. A BEAT. And then the PHONE RINGS. Nell opens her eyes. The phone RINGS. Keeps ringing. Nell, feeling the drug, finds her way to the phone and picks up. NELL Hello? Yes, this is Eleanor. -- Where? Yes, it's right here. Nell listens for a long moment. She picks up the classifieds, flips through. And there it is: TROUBLE SLEEPING? WANTED - RESEARCH SUBJECTS. $900.00/.WEEK + RM.&BD. @ BEAUTIFUL OLD HOUSE IN BERKSHIRES. PSYCHOLOGY STUDY. END MAIN TITLE SEQUENCE INT. PSYCH OBSERVATION LAB - DAY The lab feels more like the video center of a security office than a psychologist's laboratory. Two banks of black and white monitors give us images of men and women, different ages, different races, wired to electrodes. They are taking psychological tests, although we never see the Testers. The subjects are working through variations on object manipulation and pattern recognition tests. There are subtle differences between the two banks of monitors. On the left, the subjects are all twitching at exactly the same time, on the right, the subjects are also twitching, but in no discernible sequence. The subjects on the left are better able to concentrate on their tasks. The subjects on the right keep stopping, and going over what they have done. Two men, MALCOLM KEOGH, in his 50's, is a graying professor, the head of the department; someone we trust. He faces PROFESSOR JAMES MARROW. He is a man whose confidence rests uneasily on his ambition, and in the tension between the two is the power that makes him the teacher students love. Right now, though, he is defending himself before a Department Review. This is not a court martial with judges behind a desk, it's more free form. The men are having a fight, and they are watched by OTHER PROFESSORS. MALCOLM It's still an electric shock! MARROW Come on Malcolm, it's only seven ohms, it's nothing, it's like a joy buzzer! And it's not about the pain, it's about the interference with concentration... Malcolm looks at the monitor. This is Marrow's chance to explain it again. MARROW (cont'd) Look, look at what it does! The subjects on the left, because they anticipate the shocks, make the adjustment, and lose nothing on their scores. The subjects on the right, because the shocks are random, can't anticipate, and the distraction throws them off. MALCOLM Stop defending your science after the fact, Jim. The department protocol for research is very clear about this, and you violated the rules. I know, I know, I know that "Fear and Performance" is a big sexy idea, but as long as I'm chairman here you will need this department's endorsement to publish it, and right now I can't do that. At this moment, MARY LAMBRETTA, late 20's, Marrow's pretty T.A., opens the door with an armload of files. Whatever else she's wearing, she wears glasses. Marrow, seeing her, motions for her to go away. He doesn't break eye contact with Malcolm. Mary hesitates... MARROW Malcolm, this is essential work I'm doing. Just think what my research can do for education. Elementary school classrooms near train tracks or airports, where loud noise is random; this helps to prove the need for sound insulation if the children are ever going to learn to read. MALCOLM And that will be a good place to end this study. MARROW No, Malcolm! Individual performance is only part of it. I know why baseball players choke for no reason, I know why violinists throw up with fear before every concert, and need to, to give a great performance, but what I want to know is, how fear works in a group... MALCOLM Not the way you've constructed your group, it's just not ethical! MARROW But if the group knows it's being studied as a group, you contaminate the results. The deception is minor. Malcolm sees Mary Lambretta. MALCOLM Are you working with her? MARROW Mary, I'll meet you outside. She understands, and she closes the door. MALCOLM Why are you working with her? Mary Lambretta was thrown out of the department for trying to get a Ph.D. in psychic studies. MARROW And after she was thrown out, she needed a job. MALCOLM You don't believe in the paranormal. MARROW No, but she does, and that's all that matters. MALCOLM Does she know that's why you're using her? MARROW No. MALCOLM I, I just can't... MARROW She needed a job, Malcolm. And she's smart. And she helps me. MALCOLM I have a bad feeling about what you're doing. MARROW This is the last chapter. Please, please give me clearance. It's for science. Marrow waits. MALCOLM I'm gonna hate myself for this. But he nods. Permission granted. MARROW Thank you. INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE LAB - DAY They open the door. They walk out. Mary is there. She closes her eyes, and does a gypsy voice. MARY I see a hostile man... he's (she describes him). The hostile man does not believe in Madame Velka. This relieves the pressure. Malcolm is not listening anymore and storms off. MARY You know what he's really upset about? MARROW What? MARY You're going to publish, he's going to perish... And why did you hire me for this? Marrow has a sly smile. They go into his office through another door in the lab. INT. MARROW'S OFFICE - DAY Long, narrow, badly lit, it's filled with filing cabinets, stacks of unread textbooks still in publisher's plastic, a desk with computer. As soon as they enter, Mary looks at the phone. MARY It's for you. And then the phone rings. He doesn't pick it right up, he lets it ring. MARROW You hear the vibrations in the wire. There's a magnetic pulse in the wires, you feel it. I could test it. MARY Test it. The phone still rings. Marrow answers. MARROW Yes, this is Doctor Marrow. MARY How'd I know it was for you? MARROW (quickly) Because it's my phone. (back to the phone) Yes... Mrs. Dudley, just leave the boxes inside, thank you. See you soon. Thank you. He hangs up. Marrow is trying to read the first file as he goes to his desk. Mary shows him a huge CORKBOARD covered with photos, articles, and various items. MARY Here's how they're organized. Groups of five, very different personalities: scored all over the Kiersey Temperament Sorter just like you asked for. And they all score high on the insomnia charts. MARROW Good. A PHOTO OF NELL falls on the floor. Marrow scoops it up. He holds the photo of Nell up to Mary, and look at the written notes and studies the graphs that go with it. MARROW (cont'd) This is correct? MARY Her mother died two months ago. She says she really wants to do this. I didn't know if it'd be taking advantage... Marrow considers the lonely image for a long moment and then looks at the graph of her test scores. MARROW (meaning the graph, not the face) What a beautiful profile. How do you feel about her? What does your intuition say? Mary balks at his teasing. MARY I put my favorites on the top. Marrow continues to study the files. MARROW (OC) Okay... this one's good... Extrovert Feeler... Okay... This one I like, too... We don't pay as much attention now to the cork board as to other images on the wall. We find clinical-looking shots from Stanley Milgram's experiments: subjects appearing to scream in response to electrical shock. Rows of weeping prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. Photos of victims crushed under the stands of a soccer stadium, the aftermath of a riot. A picture of the Fuhrer before his mesmerized masses. Mary opens a large envelope. She takes out a photograph that we can't see. MARY What's this? (has to get his attention) What's this... this picture? MARROW That? That's Hill House. MARY This is where we're going? MARROW Yes. It's perfect, isn't it? Mary studies the picture, and she can't answer him. In her glasses, we get the thinnest reflection of the photograph, a glimpse of dark brick and high chimneys. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell, in a rust-wormed old Buick, glances from the road to computer-drawn DIRECTIONS TO HILL HOUSE. She HUMS A TUNE, soft, lonely, like a lullaby but eerie, off-key. EXT. ROUTE 39 - DAY The car speeds down the country road, past old stone walls, out into rolling meadow, its winding route taking it across the western Berkshires, farther and farther into the glorious hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Countryside speeds by. She passes an antique store in a barn. A handpainted sign warns MELBY'S APPLE FARM 100 YARDS. Nell grabs for the window handle, letting in air. She snorts, smelling, breathing like it was the first time in her life... sounding like a pig. And it makes her burst out in embarrassing, animal laughter. EXT. HILLSDALE - DAY (ESTABLISHING) The white-steepled church, five stores and gas station of Hillsdale lie in a forgotten notch in the hills. EXT. GAS STATION - DAY Nell is pumping gas at a country station. She is alone at the pump. As she finishes, she hears a BABY CRYING. She looks up. She is immediately drawn by the sound. She moves to a car at another pump. The car is empty. The windows are rolled up. She peers into the car, through the window, and sees a toddler in a car seat. The child is crying. Nell looks around, no one is there. She makes faces at the baby, coos to it. NELL Hello Baby... She does a peek-a-boo game, and the baby stops crying, the baby even starts to giggle. A VOICE from behind. MOTHER (O.S.) What's going on, what happened? Nell turns. The Mother is a busy country mom, arms filled with stuff from the gas station's market. NELL She's okay. She woke up and she saw she was alone. The mother has the car open and the baby is smiling now. MOTHER Say thank you, Spencer. (too much of an explanation) I was getting her something to drink. She's been crying all day... NELL That's all right. MOTHER Of course you know, how many children do you have? NELL None. MOM Then you're a teacher. Nursery school. NELL No. MOM You just... you seem like someone who takes care of children, lots of children. NELL Maybe... maybe someday. I'd like that. The woman smiles in something like sympathy, and gets in her car. When she does, we see a friendly GAS STATION ATTENDANT appear behind Nell. NELL (cont'd) Umm, I'm a little lost. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Where you going? Nell takes out her computer drawn directions and an old map. NELL They sent me directions and I've got a map, but it's kind of confusing. Here... it's a place called Hill House? His helpful attitude changes dramatically. GAS STATION ATTENDANT Hill House. He takes the map book and tears out the page and crumples it up. NELL What are you doing? GAS STATION ATTENDANT You don't want to go there. He turns abruptly and walks away. NELL Did I say something wrong to you? Nell slams the Buick door, and breathing hard, starts the engine. She gets control, and puts the car in gear. She's shaken. Badly. EXT. COUNTRY LANE - DAY Nell's Buick bounces over a country road. The car works its way up into the steep, switchbacking hills. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks out at the forest, feels a chill. The road is more like a tunnel through the forest than a road. EXT. HILLS - DAY Nell's car speeds through the trees, climbing the hills, higher and higher into the awesome solitude. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell takes a final switchback, and something off to the right catches her eye, then is gone in the trees. She watches again for it. There. A glimpse of a gray stone property wall set back twenty yards from the road. There it is again. Moss-greened, twenty feet high, a wicked array of iron spikes and glass mortared atop it. And then out of the tangled forest in front of her looms a pair of immense stone pillars. Between them, a steel GATE as high as the wall, chained and padlocked. EXT. HILL HOUSE GATE - DAY The gate stands immense. Silent. Forbidding. Beyond them a gravel drive curves away through the trees. Nell kills her car, gets out, instructions in hand. No one in sight. A long beat. She reaches in and blows the HORN. The HORN shatters the air, rackets off the trees beyond the gate, echoing. Silence. Nell blows the HORN a sustained staccato in annoyance. The echo replies in a terrible, deafening battering of sound. Nell covers her ears. Silence once again. In a fit of agitation she goes to the padlock and rattles it. It's locked good. She turns -- -- and there is a man right behind her. It is MR. DUDLEY, his hair tied back like an ex-hippie. He stands between Nell and her open car door, weed spear in hand. He smiles at her -- rough, dirty, massive. MR. DUDLEY What do you want? NELL Oh! You scared me. MR. DUDLEY Me? No. What are you doing here? NELL Are you Mister Dudley, the caretaker? MR. DUDLEY Yeah, I'm Mister Dudley, the caretaker. What are you doing here? NELL I'm with Dr. Marrow's group. I'm supposed to check in with Mrs. Dudley up at the house. Is she here? She hands him the directions. He glances at them. She uses the distraction to get into her car. MR. DUDLEY Maybe she is... INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell looks at the gate, some part of her aware it's a point of no- return. Mr. Dudley eases over to her window. Mr. Dudley gives her one last look and goes to the gate. He produces a keyring and undoes the padlock. NELL Why do you need a chain like that? MR. DUDLEY That's a good question. What is it about fences? Sometimes a locked chain makes people on both sides of the fence just a little more comfortable. Why would that be? He unwinds the enormous chain, heavy turn after heavy turn. The gates swing in, revealing HILL HOUSE. NELL Is there something about the house? MR. DUDLEY Mrs. Dudley'll be waiting for you. Grinning, Dudley steps aside and Nell rolls through. And at that he just grins wider. Nell pulls away. Disturbed, she watches him in the rearview mirror. She turns and in front of her sprawls Hill House. At center, the features of the oldest part of the House dwarf all others: towering, eye-like windows and the jaws of a Grand Entry with carved ebony doors. EXT. HILL HOUSE DRIVEWAY - DAY The car rumbles up the drive toward the carport. INT. NELL'S CAR - DAY Nell stops the car in front of the entrance, right inside the carport. In the silence all we can hear is her breathing. EXT. HILL HOUSE - DAY Her car sits in front of the house, tiny, alone. Its brake lights go off. The finger-like pillars of the car port seem like a hand pinning the car in place under the House's gaze. Nell gets out of the car. Nell stares, daunted... yet there is something about the House. A romance in its lilac heavy Gothic decay. Nell feels it, is drawn to it. EXT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY Nell, suitcase in hand, climbs the steps to the front doors. On closer inspection, the snaking shapes of the carved doors depict a Garden of Eden. At center on the knocker, a tarnished silver Adam takes the forbidden fruit from his counterpart Eve. Nell lifts Adam and knocks heavily. There is no answer. Nell looks around for some sign of life. Off to one side is a LADDER and PAINT CANS. Somebody must've been touching up the window trim. When she looks back the door is AJAR a fraction of an inch. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Mrs. Dudley, are you here? Anybody? Tentative, she pushes it open into -- INT. GRAND ENTRY - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- a vast entry towering away to a ceiling lost in shadow far above. Rays of light filter through floor-to-ceiling curtains. Doors lead off in a half dozen directions. Every piece of woodwork or plaster in the house is carved, filigreed, painted or ornamented in wild, ornate fashion. It overwhelms the eye. NELL Wow... She turns around, sets her suitcase on the marble floor. A short hallway straight ahead seems to let onto some vast space, dimly lit. And then Nell hears a SOUND. Carrying through the empty halls from some distant place: a low, plaintive MOAN. Nell freezes. The MOANING stops. Nell strains her ears. And then the MOAN again. It comes from the short hallway ahead. Nell starts for it. The Moan stops. INT. HALL FROM ENTRY TO GREAT HALL - DAY Nell moves down the hall. It's dim, stale, lined with pier tables, candelabra. NELL Hello? Hello? Mrs. Dudley? Her voice echoes from the room beyond. She follows her own voice into -- INT. GREAT HALL - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- A long, oval great hall. Passages and doors lead off in all directions to God-knows-where. A double-grand staircase at the far end ascends to a landing shrouded in darkness before turning up the next floor. Magnificent ANIMAL HEADS carved on the newel posts glare at her. Nell makes her way past clusters of furniture, stops at the center. Silence. An ENORMOUS FIREPLACE dominates one wall. Large enough to stand in. An iron mesh SCREEN hangs in its mouth. Mantle and chimney rise in dark, baroque masonry, becoming lost in the shadows above. The MOANING sound. Nell spins away from the fireplace. The sound rises from the door at the very back of the hall. Nell takes a step toward it. NELL Mrs. Dudley? She moves up to the door, puts a hand out to it. The MOANING rises. Nell pushes through -- INT. 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY TOWARDS KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- into a much narrower, curving hallway. Doors all along it. The sound comes from the door right there across from the one Nell just came through. She flings it open -- INT. KITCHEN - DAY (CONTINUOUS) -- and comes through into a vast kitchen. A woman in black with her back to Nell stands at a counter. The moaning comes from a disreputable old CAN OPENER. Nell breaths, feels stupid. The woman senses her, turns from her cans of potatoes. She is MRS. DUDLEY, sallow, unsmiling. MRS. DUDLEY It's make the soup or answer the door. Can't do both. NELL Mrs. Dudley. MRS. DUDLEY So far. Mrs. Dudley wipes her hands, regards Nell, nods. NELL I'm Eleanor Vance, I'm with -- MRS. DUDLEY -- Dr. Marrow's group. You're the first. Mrs. Dudley just stares with her sunken face. It unsettles Nell. MRS. DUDLEY (cont'd) I'll show you your room. INT. GRAND STAIRWAY/MEZZANINE - DAY Mrs. Dudley glides up the stairs. Nell follows, hoisting her suitcase after her. It appears the mezzanine ahead leads to a hallway. But as we draw closer what we thought was a hallway is an ENORMOUS OIL PAINTING. In it stands a man, his features lost in the shadows above, only his body visible. The nameplate reads HUGH CRAIN. NELL Hugh Crain. Nell looks up: Mrs. Dudley waits coldly at the top of the stairs. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Mrs. Dudley leads Nell down a curved hallway, over aged Persian carpets and turns to a door on her left. She throws it open, stands back. Nell enters. INT. NELL'S ROOM - DAY Nell lowers her suitcase. MRS. DUDLEY The Purple Room. You're going to be the first visitors that Hill House has had since Mister Crain died. The room is spacious, in a rococo gothic style with low-relief woodwork on the walls rising to a dark, coffered, ceiling of carved ivory. A king-size bed, furniture, all in blue purple. An open door gives a glimpse of a bathroom. A large fireplace dominates one wall. Its mantle is carved with the faces of children, happy, at play, alive. Nell touches the wood, loving. NELL They're so beautiful. Aren't they? MRS. DUDLEY I've seen 'em. Lot to dust. NELL Well, I've never lived with beauty. You must love working here. Mrs. Dudley peers at her. A beat. And then, cryptic: MRS. DUDLEY It's a job. I keep banker's hours. I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. You can serve yourselves. Breakfast is ready at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after dinner. Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes. We live in town. Nine miles. So there won't be anyone around if you need help. We couldn't even hear you, in the night. NELL Why would we -- MRS. DUDLEY -- no one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark. And with that Mrs. Dudley grins, rictus-like. She turns and closes the door after her. Nell stands there a long moment, the room silent, heavy, old. She goes to the windows, peers out. Nothing but forest for miles. The sun is setting. Nell removes her windbreaker, opens her suitcase, takes out a blouse and skirt. Decent enough clothes, but cheap, the tags still on them. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell emerges from her room in her new clothes. The hallway curves away into the distance, lined with massive, ornate doorframes like the one to her room. Trying to get a better look, Nell searches the walls for a light switch, but can't find one. She follows the chair rail back to -- INT. MEZZANINE - SUNSET (CONTINUOUS) -- the mezzanine at the top of the stairs. She searches in vain for a light switch there. Finally she spots a set of curtains and slings them open. The light, late-day though it is, makes her wince. The window looks down on the driveway. Outside a BEIGE CAR crunches over the gravel. Somebody else has arrived. Nell watches the car move past, trying to get a glimpse of the driver, but from up here, all she can see is roof. NELL Finally. She backs away from the window, spins around -- -- and out of the darkness, powerful, mad, looms the visage of Hugh Crain. It is the painting. It is only from up here on the second floor with this curtain open that the FACE is visible in the late- day sunlight. Despite the artist's discretion, the lines in the man's skin, his eyes, his posture, cry of unspeakable sickness. Unconsciously, Nell takes a step back. In the far b.g., near the end of one of the halls, a DOOR stands open, the second or third set of doors in the Gothic Hallway left of the painting. Just as it starts to come into view, and we're starting to see it, it swings silently shut. But Nell has caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. INT. 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, NORTH WING - DAY Nell stares down the long hallway. Which door was

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