Author: Mary Noailles Murfree

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 9781230356785

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... XVI. In the deep obscurity of those dark hours before the moonrise, in the effacement of all the visible expressions of material nature, save the glitter of the stars and the glooming of the shadows, Felix Guthrie had been alone, as it were, with his own soul. He had never known, native of the wilderness though he was, so intense a sense of solitude. It was as if his spirit had gone forth from the familiar world into the vast voids of the uncreate. He took no heed of the dangerous way down the steeps, but gave the horse the rein, and trusted to the keener nocturnal sight of the animal. His dog ran on ahead pioneerwise, retracing his way from time to time and gambolling about his master's stirrup irons, his presence only made known by a vague panting which Guthrie neither heard nor heeded. Even to the voice of the mountain torrent he was oblivious, although it seemed louder far by night than by day, assertive, unafraid, congener of the solitude, the darkness, and the melancholy isolations of the mountain woods. The rhododendron blooming all unseen by the way touched his cheek with a soft petal and a freshness of dew; now and again a brier clutched at his sleeve; sometimes a stone rolled beneath his horse's hoofs, and fell into the abyss at the side of the road, sonorously echoing and echoing as it smote upon the rocky walls of the chasm, the decisive final thud so long delayed that to judge thus of the unseen depths which lurked at either hand might have daunted him had he listened. The horse would hesitate at times, and send forth a whinnying plaint of doubt or fear when the rushing torrent crossed the way, plunging in presently, however, and, if need were, swimming gallantly, with the swimming dog in his wake. Guthrie's thoughts made...