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Melchior's Dream, and Other Tales, Ed. by Mrs. Alfred Gatty
Melchior's Dream and Other Tales Ed by Mrs Alfred Gatty Author:Juliana Horatia Ewing General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1886 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: 193 THE YEW-LANE GHOSTS. CHAPTER I. " Cowards are cruel." Old Peoverb. This story begins on a fine autumn afternoon, when at the end of a field over which the shadows of a few wayside trees were stalking like long thin giants, a man and a boy sat side by side upon a stile. They were not a happy looking pair. The boy looked uncomfortable, because he wanted to get away and dared not go. The man looked uncomfortable also ; but then no one had ever seen him look otherwise, which was the more strange as he never professed to have any object in life but his own pleasure and gratification. Not troubling himself with any consideration of law or principle -- of his own duty or other people's comfort -- he had consistently spent his whole time and energies in trying to be jolly ; and though now a grown-up young man, had so far had every appearance of failing in the attempt. From this it will be seen that he was not the most estimable of characters, and we shall have no more to do with him than we can help ; but as he must appear in the story, he may as well be described. If constant self-indulgence had answered as well as it should have done, he would have been a fine-looking young man ; as it was, the habits of his life were fast destroying his appearance. His hair would have been golden if it had been kept clean. His figure was tall and strong ; but the custom of slinking about places where he had no business to be, and lounging in corners where he had nothing to do, had given it such a hopeless slouch, that for the matter of beauty he might almost as well have been knock-kneed. His eyes would have been...« less
ISBN-13: 9781143419324 ISBN-10: 1143419324 Publication Date: 2/3/2010 Pages:354 Edition:Large type edition Reading Level: All Ages Rating: