It was the dead goat, withered to a mummy almost, with horns and hide
intact, and a rat-way bored through the body of the beast under a tunnel of
its ribs.
"Jimmery! to see what them varmints have done to 'en! But I'll bury what's
left right on en; an' I'll stop the sink in the house, then you'll be free
of 'em."
These things the farmer did, and presently departed, promising to revisit
the spot ere long with some dogs and a ferret or two. So Barron was left
master of the place. He found it dry, weather-proof and well suited to his
requirements in every respect. The concerns which he had ordered from
London would be with him by Saturday night if all went well, and he decided
that they should be conveyed to the byre at an early hour on Monday
morning.
The next day was Sunday, and half a dozen men, with Barron and Murdoch
among them, strolled into Brady's great whitewashed studio to see and
criticise his academy picture which was finished. Everybody declared that
the artist had excelled himself in "The End of the Voyage." It represented
a sweep of the rocky coast by the Lizard, a wide gray sand, left naked by
the tide, with the fringe of a heavy sea churning on it, and sea-fowl
strutting here and there. In the foreground, half buried under tangles of
brown weed torn from the rocks by past storms, lay a dead sailor, and a big
herring-gull, with its head on one side and a world of inquiry in its
yellow eyes, was looking at him.
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