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Author of "Keep My Secret," "A False Position," etc.
"What so false as truth is, False to thee? Where the serpent's tooth is, Shun the tree-- Where the apple reddens, Never pry-- Lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I!"
Montreal: John Lovell & Son, 23 St. Nicholas Street.
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1889, by John Lovell & Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at Ottawa.
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
Anyone who has read the _Mort d'Arthur_ can hardly fail, if he traverse the Combe of Edge in early summer, to be struck by its resemblance to the fairy Valley of Avilion.
A spot still by good fortune remote from rail, and therefore lying fresh and unsullied between its protecting hills, waiting, like the pearl of great price, to reward the eye of the diligent seeker after beauty. It seems hard, at first glance, to believe that the rigors of an English winter can ever sweep across its sunny uplands.
"Where falls not rain, nor hail, nor any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery willows, crowned with summer sea."
As regards the falling of rain and hail, and the buffeting of winds, it is to be supposed the place does not, literally speaking, resemble the mystic Isle; but it was a fact, as Allonby had just elicited from the oldest inhabitant, that snow had only three times lain on the hills within his memory.
To the young man himself, as he sat in a patch of shade just outside the rural inn, with a tankard of cider in his hand, and his long legs extended in an attitude of blissful rest, it seemed as if the remainder of the description must be also true.
Up over his head, the sky was blue--how blue! An unseen lark trembled somewhere in its depths, and its song dropped earthwards in trills of melody.
It was that loveliest season of the English summer which comes before the cutting of the grass. All up the sides of the valley the meadows were ripe for the scythe; the dark-red spires of the sorrel and the white stars of the ox-eye daisy bent softly in the warm south breeze. Down below the level of the eye, in the very heart of the Combe, a fringe of reeds and little willows marked the lowly course of the brook. No one who noted its insignificant proportions would have guessed--unless he were a true disciple of Isaak Walton--what plump trout glided over its clear gravel bed.