The Halfcaste Author:Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: QUINTIN MATSYS, THE BLACKSMITH OF ANTWERP. Nearly four hundred years ago there was, at a short distance from the city of Antwerp, a blacksmith's cotta... more »ge. It was not much better than a hut—low-roofed, mud-walled, and consisting of only one room. It was situated a little aloof from the high-road, in one of those solitary nooks which are so often found, when least suspected, in the neighbourhood of large cities. Only at times there came through the distance the faint hum of a populous town, and the high spires of the renowned cathedral stood out in bold relief against the sky, which was of that pale bluish gray peculiar to an October evening, when the brilliant autumn sunsets are in some degree gone by. The blacksmith's wife sat spinning by the half-open door of her humble dwelling. She was a woman of middle age; her face was of that peculiar Flemish cast which the Dutch painters have made so well known—round, fair, and rosy, with sleepy eyes of pale blue, bearing an expression of quiet content, almost amounting to apathy. A few locks of silky flaxen hair peeped from under her Flemish cap, and were smoothly laid over a rather high forehead, where,as yet, no wrinkle had intruded. She looked like one on whom the ills of life would fall lightly; who would go on in her own quiet way, only seen by the unobtrusive acts of goodness which she did to others. Such characters are lightly esteemed and little praised, yet what would the world be without them ? The good Flemish dame sat at her work undisturbed, occasionally stopping to listen for the noise of her husband's forge, which resounded from the high-road, a little way off, where the blacksmith had wisely placed it, as well to deaden the noise of the hammering in his little cottage as to attract stray customers. At this d...« less