They were playing poker, and invited him to take a hand.

When the rascal went on to tell me confidentially that he "loved the ground his Agnes walked on," and that he thought she might come to be kind to him, knowing his usefulness to her father, I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire and running him through with it.

Without waiting for an answer, he took the poker and dealt the logs several blows.

At the end of three to five minutes, owing to the amount of work he is doing, you will see him pick up his little shovel and throw in a little coal; he does exactly as he did before, and if we stay there for an hour we will not see him pick up a poker.

Tug realized this, too, very shortly, and he and History threw the pokers away.

" Taking them off, he hung them on the banisters, and, with a passing thought of Lady Godiva, closed the kitchen door and advanced again towards the grate, still grasping the poker in his hand.

" He ceased to speak, laid down the poker without sound, and sat with clasped hands, staring blindly before him.

" With complete disregard for the theorising of science, she then stuck the poker up in front of the bars to keep the fire bright.

"He seems to have taken a great fancy to draw poker.

Before the Crows knew what was up, Tug and History were upon them and had cut a path through the ring by merely brandishing their incandescent pokers, and had disappeared into the dark of the woods.

Tug's eyes were not blindfolded, and he had seen that, though the Crows had waved a red-hot poker before History's nose, they had quickly substituted a very cold rod to thrust down his back.

He grabbed the heavy poker from the chimney corner, and started toward the door.

Billy was standing at the stove, a frightened boy, but he gripped the poker in his hand.

To this stratagem the first Crow responded with another,he trumped Tug's ace, as it were,for though he saw that the fire was going out and would not heat the pokers much longer, he decided not to wait for this, but set his men to gathering stones and sticks to pelt the two luckless Lakerimmers with.

" MISTRESS"Have you a reference?" BRIDGET"Foine; Oi held the poker over her till Oi got it.

From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door.

"All I ask is that you'll 'ide the poker and anything else that might be laying about handy.

If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true "fancy" phrase, "knocked its two daylights into one," as the commingled fragments of my tea-service testified.

There lay a heavy iron poker bent double.

She had made the semi-political, semi-social organizations to which he belonged appear stupid, and especially so when he lost his money playing poker in the club-room (for the club had only one room), when he might have put it away for her.

"By the poly hokerI mean the holy poker!

He needed a large poker, however, for there was only the one stove in the entire big room, and it was a giant of its kind, as capacious as a hogshead.

"Piers," he said, "I presume she knows all there is to know of that bad business?" Piers rammed the poker a little deeper into the fire and said nothing.

Meantime, you, Esmeralda, have been arduously devoting yourself to maintaining a correct attitude, and are rewarded by hearing somebody in the gallery wonder whether you represent the kitchen poker or Bunker Hill Monument.

Stop running red-hot pokers down your backs.