" The bridge, as I
say, was arched and covered in, in a very ridiculous manner, and there
was a most uncomfortable echo about it at all times- an echo which I
never before so particularly observed as when I uttered the four
last words of my remark.
But what I said, or what I thought, or what I heard, occupied only
an instant. In less than five seconds from his starting, my poor
Toby had taken the leap. I saw him run nimbly, and spring grandly from
the floor of the bridge, cutting the most awful flourishes with his
legs as he went up. I saw him high in the air, pigeon-winging it to
admiration just over the top of the stile; and of course I thought
it an unusually singular thing that he did not continue to go over.
But the whole leap was the affair of a moment, and, before I had a
chance to make any profound reflections, down came Mr. Dammit on the
flat of his back, on the same side of the stile from which he had
started. At the same instant I saw the old gentleman limping off at
the top of his speed, having caught and wrapt up in his apron
something that fell heavily into it from the darkness of the arch just
over the turnstile.
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