THREE:The table at which she worked was covered with small cardboard slips, bearing in her neat minute handwriting the titles and the authors of the books in Mr Keelings library. Each appeared twice, once under its author, once under its title, and these she was sorting out into an alphabetical file from which she would compile her catalogue. She had been at work on it for about a fortnight, and the faint hopes she had originally entertained of getting it finished by the end of the year had now completely vanished. He had been{129} buying books in very large numbers; already wing-bookcases had begun to invade the floor space of his room, and he intended in the spring to build out farther into the garden. But Norah was not at all sure that she regretted the vanishing of those hopes: the work interested her, and she had the true book-lovers pride in making all the equipment connected with books as perfect as it could be. Three times a week she went with her brother after supper for a couple of hours work in Mr Keelings library: the other evenings she brought into order at home the collection of slips she had made there.
THREE:He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo, as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him, bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.I am late, sir, she said. I am exceedingly sorry.
THREE:
TWO:After the disaster there had been much to do. Four times had Allingham's car travelled between the cricket ground and the local hospital, and it was half past six before the eleven players and the two umpires had been conveyed thither, treated for their wounds and discharged. No one was seriously injured, but in each case the abrasion on the side of the head had been severe enough to demand treatment. One or two had been a long while recovering full consciousness, and all were in a condition of mental confusion and gave wildly incoherent reports of the incident.