There was worse to come. For while the sun yet lingered on the horizon
news of further portents came thick and fast. A plum tree belonging to
a farmer of good standing had unaccountably lost all its leaves. The
Duchess arrived in a state of unusual trepidation, declaring that the
tortoise-shell of her lorgnette gave forth a crackling sound. She
appealed to Don Francesco to explain the meaning of this extraordinary
circumstance; it crackled most distinctly, she declared. Not far from
the little bay where only yesterday the streamlet of Saint Elias still
trickled into the sea, a fisherman had caught a one-eyed lamprey--a
beast, unquestionably, of ill repute. The bibliographer, strolling
about with Denis, recollected that his fox-terrier that very morning
had been violently sick. He seemed to attach no great importance to the
affair; all the same, he said, it was rather queer; dogs are not like
that; now, if it had been Keith. . . . The baby of the principal grocer
had tumbled downstairs and thereupon proceeded to swallow eight of its
elder brother's marbles which had been carelessly left on the
floor--without experiencing, so far as could be ascertained, any
appreciable injury.
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