Kitchen Remodels - Cabinet Doors, Styles and Finishes

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Kitchen Remodels - Cabinet Doors, Styles and Finishes

again the dutiful ward of the King, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh—she hath asked to be so called"— "You lie," I said. "She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in the state cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh with her lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold." As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true. With that knowledge came a happi- ness so deep and strong that it swept aside like straw the tor- ment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. He looked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with hands clenched. "Embrace her heart, if thou canst," he said, in a voice so low that it came like a whisper from the realm he might have left. "I shall press my face against her bosom." Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break; then he turned and went up the ladder. The seamen and the master fol- lowed. The hatch was clapped to and fastened, and we were left to the darkness and the heavy air, and to a grim endurance of what could not be cured. During those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the man who sat beside me. His hands were so fastened that he could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for him to give me; but he could and did bestow a higher alms,—the tenderness of a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God. I lay in silence, and he spoke not often; but when he did so, there was that in the tone of his voice—Another cycle of pain, and I awoke from a half swoon, in which there was water to drink and no anguish, to hear him praying beside me. He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw his breath hard and his great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharp sound of breaking iron, and a low "Thank Thee, Lord!" Another moment, and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. "I will have them off thee in a twinkling, Ralph," he said, "thanks to Him who taught my hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel." As he spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers.