'Twixt Shadow and Shine (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. IN WHICH WE SUP AT THE PILCHAKD INN. To say that Mr. Julius Hardy and his friends astonished Pencarrow is to give but a feeble notion of the effect produced upon the township by their arrival and conduct. In the first place, it appeared that the operation of driving had been performed by one Patrick O'Gorman, a young Irishman of considerable size and weight. Mr. O'Gorman?known familiarly as Patsy ? had devoted himself to the practice of athletic sports from early childhood, and was considered by some of his immediate friends and admirers to be a trifle superior to Heenan in physique and daring. Anative of the colony, and educated at one of the largest of the city schools, he was not without some considerable opinion of himself. His bedroom was decorated with photographs of ' The Cestus Players/ and ' The Dying Gladiator/ while a woodcut of Gerome's ' Pollice Verso' was cut from an illustrated paper and pinned at his bed's foot. When you visited Mr. O'Gorman in his chamber, he would point to these works of art and say?after a scornful glance at your chest and biceps: ?" Those were men, my boy! Not like us puny creatures. Bah ! I begin to lose faith in my manhood ! Sit down. Spinner and I walked forty miles yesterday. By Ajax, a glorious walk!" Spinner was the gigantic O'Gorman's bosom friend, and weighed probably six stone four Ibs. Nevertheless, Spinner also was an athlete in his way, a championamong light-weights, a tree-climber, a desperate fellow with ropes and a ladder. The pair would sometimes depart on secret expeditions to Mount Macedou or Mount Juliet, and on their return, O'Gorman, in relating their deeds of gymnastic daring, would always end by mysteriously sinking his voice, and saying, " But you should have seen Spinner! Spinner, sir, was Immen...