Crossword-Solution: BASKER 6 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 12

What had he not given for one hour of the soothing company of his wife, the only being in the world to whom his pride could have communicated the grief of his heart, or the doubts of his conscience! Alas! never on earth should he hear that soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, was afar; but she was happy,--a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind to the darkening clouds.

And certainly her _Duke of Cheviot_ is a miracle of obtuseness, who, if he had not been made a hero by his valet (an original and happy creation), would have grievously belied the proud old family motto, "_Je me sauvegarde_." _George de Lacorfe_, fashionable, _fainéant_ and forty, reader of _The Pink 'Un_, ardent bachelor, _Basker_ in short, suddenly finds the dukedom of Cheviot thrust upon him.

The true basker, on the other hand, declines to be a party to a procedure which destroys the whole poetry of dawn and reduces the proud chanticleer to the sordid status of an alarum-clock.

But the pool they could reach only by a deliberate, flapping approach which gave even the drowsiest basker ample time to seek refuge in the safe depths.