Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno.djvu/89

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V]
A BEGGAR'S PALACE.
61

shoulders and drooping head, and with hands clasped on the top of his stick so as to make a sort of pillow for that wrinkled face with its look of patient weariness.

"Come, you be off !" the Station-master roughly accosted the poor old man. "You be off, and make way for your betters ! This way, my Lady ! " he added in a perfectly different tone. "If your Ladyship will take a seat, the train will be up in a few minutes." The cringing servility of his manner was due, no doubt, to the address legible on the pile of luggage, which announced their owner to be "Lady Muriel Orme, passenger to Elveston, viâ Fayfield Junction."

As I watched the old man slowly rise to his feet, and hobble a few paces down the plat- form, the lines came to my lips : ——

        "From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,
           With toil his stiffened limbs he rear’d ;
        A hindred years had flung their snows
          On his thin locks and floating beard."

But the lady scarcely noticed the little incident. After one glance at the ’banished