The Red Men Of The Dusk - A Romance (1900) (Paperback)

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1900 Original Publisher: J.B. Lippincott Company 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 books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IX. An Errand Of Mercy. On the third day after my arrival at Nant-y-Bryn, at about eleven o'clock of the morning I was standing at one of the windows of my uncle's room. The prospect was dreary in the extreme. A thick, dark mist had settled on the hills, and an old oak tree, forty yards away, was a faint, ghost-like shadow in the dull grey vapour. The rain fell heavily in straight, unbroken lines, and the trickling thread of rivulet which passed the house had swelled to a furious yellow flood, whose deep, hollow note filled the air. So dark was the day that the room behind me was filled with the light of fire and candle, as if the night had fallen. I turned my head and found my uncle peering at me over the top of the book he held in his hand. He was regarding me so intently and yet in a kind of abstraction, that for a moment he seemed scarcely aware that our eyes were meeting. I thought he was about to speak, but he lowered his glance to the page before him and remained silent. He was sitting near the fire, a candle at his elbow, and his usual medley of volumes heaped around him. He had inherited my grandfather's passion for study, and spent the greater part of his time in reading. I continued to gaze upon him, half-idly, half-wondering why he was staring so hard at me, and in a moment I found his eyes rising again. This time I certainly thought he had something to say, but no; he looked down again when he found that I was still regarding him. His thin, delicate face shone pink in the firelight, his long white hair was like silver, his bright dark ...