Lord Tony's Wife

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 ONE: BATH, 1793 CHAPTER I THE MOOR . Silence. Loneliness. Desolation. And the darkness of late afternoon in November, when the fog from the Bristol Channel has laid its pall upon moor and valley and hill: the last grey glimmer of a wintry sunset has faded in the west: earth and sky are wrapped in the...
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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 ONE: BATH, 1793 CHAPTER I THE MOOR . Silence. Loneliness. Desolation. And the darkness of late afternoon in November, when the fog from the Bristol Channel has laid its pall upon moor and valley and hill: the last grey glimmer of a wintry sunset has faded in the west: earth and sky are wrapped in the gloomy veils of oncoming night. Some little way ahead a tiny light flickers feebly. Surely we cannot be far now. A little more patience, Mounzeer. Twenty minutes and we be there. Twenty minutes, mordieu. And I have ridden since the morning. And you tell me it was not far. Not far, Mounzeer. But we be not 'orzemen either of us. We doan't travel very fast. How can I ride fast on this heavy beast? And in this satane mud. My horse is up to his knees in it. And I am wet?ah wet to my skin in this sacre fog of yours. The other made no reply. Indeed he seemed little inclined for conversation: his whole attention appeared to be riveted on the business of keeping in his saddle, and holding his horse's head turned in the direction in which he wished it to go: he was riding a yard or two ahead of his companion, and it did not need any assurance on his part that he was no horseman: he sat very loosely in his saddle, his broad shoulders bent, his head thrust forward, his knees turned out, his hands clinging alternately to the reins and to the pommel with that ludicrous inconsequent gesture peculiar to those who are wholly unaccustomed to horse exercise. His attitude, in fact, as well as the promiscuous set of clothes which he wore?a labourer's smock, a battered high hat, threadbare corduroys and fisherman's boots?at once suggested the loafer, the do-nothing who hangs round the yards of half-way houses and posting inns on the chance of earning a few cop...