Читать книгу The Perfect World. A romance of strange people and strange places онлайн

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Then suddenly they woke up once more to sorrow. Two horses were found to be missing, and with them the little stable boy who tended them. The “Light” had returned!

Once more voices were hushed and heads were shaken gravely, as every one talked of the tragedy. A week passed, then Mrs. Skeet disappeared, and a few days later Mary Slater. The place swarmed again with detectives; the papers were again alive with the renewal of the tragedies.

The men in the mine worked silently; the only thing to break the stillness was the sound of the picks on the coal seams, or the running of the trolleys up and down the roads. Each feared to think of the horror that might await him when he reached his home at the end of his day’s work.

The dinner hour came round, and each man sat silent and glum, eating his bread and meat, and uttering only a monosyllable now and again to his particular chum.

Suddenly there came a dull roar; the men rose to their feet in haste. They knew only too well that ominous sound—it was familiar to them all.