Garth (Paperback)

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: BOOK II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN. CHAPTER IV. THE MAN. ARTH was standing on the cloven threshold, his head bent downwards, his eyes looking up from underneath his dark brows in a fit of musing. The morning sun shone level through the October oak-leaves on the eastern side of the porch, and cast a glow upon the young man's swarthy cheek. Like most Urmsons, Garth was shorter than the average of men, but chested like a bison, and vigorously and compactly put together. His dress, on the present occasion, was that commonly worn by the New Hampshire farmers. His shaggy hair poked itself through the torn crown of a battered straw hat, clapped on the back of his capacious head. In his right hand he held a tuft of mapleleaves, whose crimson and gold splendour made his red flannel shirt look dingy. A shabby sack coat (its pockets bulging with ripe apples), corduroy trowsers, and cowhide boots completed his costume. By way of background to this sturdy figure, we have the famous green door of Urmhurst?a massive structure of six-inch oaken timber, clamped and bolted with iron, and scarred by many an ineffectual bullet and tomahawk in old-time Indian fights. Deeply engraved in quaint characters on the upper part of the framework, may still be read the date and initials " Jl.. 1648." This redoubtable door got its latest coating of green at the outbreak of the revolution; and the wind and weather of the seventy or eighty years which have elapsed from that time to this of which we write, have so mellowed and enriched the original tint, that, at a distance of a. dozen paces, we might fancy the unyielding surface overgrown with a thick blanket of soft verdant moss, such as cushions damp tombstones in English country churchyards. Though the sun was only half an hour high, Garth...