" "And how much have they taken out?" With index-finger and thumb Salaman made an "O," and looked shrewdly through it.

His small eyes sparkled with excitement; his right index-finger was crooked, as if itching for the trigger; his lips moved.

(One one occasion I saw the slate as he held it between his index and second finger, his index-finger and thumb held the slate pencil.)

Its flanking towers stood up above the battlemented wall, their turrets climbing higher and higher towards heaven, till the topmost Red Towerthat in which my father's garrot was, and in which I had spent my entire life until this daysoared straight upward above them all, like a threatening index-finger pointing, not into the clear sky of a summer's noon, but into clouds and thick darkness.