Tales of My Landlord, . (1818) (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: CHAPTER II. What strange and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head: 10 mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!" Wordsworth. In pursuing her solitary journey, our heroine, soon after passing the house of Dumbiedikes, gained a little eminence, from which, on looking to the eastward down a prattling brook, whose meanders were shaded with straggling willows and alder trees, she could see the cottages of Woodend and Beersheba, the haunts and habitation of her early life, and could distinguish the common on which she had so often herded sheep, and the recesses of the rivulet where she had pulled rushes withButler, to plait crowns and sceptres for her sister Effie, then a beautiful, but spoiled child, of about three years old. The recollections which the scene brought with them were so bitter, that, had she indulged them, she would have sate down and relieved her heart with tears. " But I kenn'd,"said Jeanie," thatgreeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming to thank the Lord, thathad shewed me kindness and countenance by means of a man, that mony ca'ed aNabal and churl, but wha was free of his gudes to me as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Mjrebah, when the people murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the congregation might drink and live. Sae, 1 wad not trust mysell with another look at poor Wood- end, tor the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market-days with us." In this resigned and Christian temper she pursued her journey, until she was beyond this place of melancholy recollections, and not distant from the village where Butler dwelt, which, with its old-fashioned church and steeple, r...