The
voice said: " Do you speak English? " For one or two seconds
he could not even understand English, and then the great fact
swelled up and within him. This voice with all its new quavers
was still undoubtedly the voice of Prof. Harrison B.Wainwright
of Washurst College
CHAPTER XII.
A CHANGE flashed over Coleman as if it had come from an
electric storage. He had known the professor long, but he had
never before heard a quaver in his voice, and it was this little
quaver that seemed to impel him to supreme disregard of the
dangers which he looked upon as being the final dangers. His
own voice had not quavered.
When he spoke, he spoke in a low tone, it was the voice of
the master of the situation. He could hear his dupes fluttering
there in the darkness. " Yes," he said, " I speak English. There
is some danger. Stay where you are and make no noise." He
was as cool as an iced drink. To be sure the circumstances had
in no wise changed as to his personal danger, but beyond the
important fact that there were now others to endure it with him,
he seemed able to forget it in a strange, unauthorized sense of
victory. It came from the professor's quavers.
Meanwhile he had forgotten the dragoman, but he recalled
him in time to bid him wait. Then, as well concealed as a monk
hiding in his cowl, he tip-toed back into a group of people who
knew him intimately.
He discerned two women mounted on little horses and about
them were dim men.
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