From the Tower Window of My Bookhouse
Olive Beaupre Miller
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ...At one moment he thought of killing all the farmer's cattle; next of killing him; challenging him to single combat with the arms, and according to the fashion of gentlemen. But the farmer was a coward; he would refuse. Then he, Richard Feverel, would stand by the farmer's bedside, and rouse him, rouse him to fight with powder and ball in his own chamber, in the cowardly midnight, where he might tremble, but dare not refuse. "Lord!" cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots were raging in his comrade's brain. "How I wish you'd have let me shy one at him, Ricky! I'd feel quite jolly if I'd spanked him once." To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily forward facing but one object. After tearing through imiumerable hedges, leaping fences, jumping dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged and tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize to the vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of light upon him, till in the course of another minute he was enduring the extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader whither he was being conducted. Raynham was now out of sight. They were a long way down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at leisure; geese gabbling by a horse-pond; uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care for. Ripton was in despair "Where are you going to?" he inquired and halted resolutely. Richard now broke his silence to reply, "Anywhere." "Anywhere!" Ripton repeated, "but aren't you awful hungry?"...