The Argosy Catalogue Of Fine And Rare Books PDF Download

Excerpt from The Argosy, Vol. 39 Night was fast settling down over a wild mountain pass. There might be still a few pale sunset glories lingering in the west, but these could not be seen from the deep ravine, round which the great hills seemed, in the uncertain light, to draw closer and closer. It was a desolate spot. The straggling fringes of pines and firs, which softened the austerity of some of the fastnesses around, were wholly wanting here. The valley-bottom was chiefly swamp, rendered almost the more treacherous by the masses of stone which the storms of winter had hurled upon it from the hill-tops. No bird could build a nest in that valley. The sheep seldom wandered there. An eagle might occasionally career above it, and its scream would be the appropriate voice of the Spirit of Desolation which brooded over the place. But the only sound of its own was the lap of a flowing stream among the stones - a stream whose course one could easily imagine no human foot had ever tracked. But stop! Can it be that in this lonesome valley even at this bewildering twilight hour there are voices? The voices are those of two young men. They wear tourist suits of dark blue serge, and have knapsacks strapped to their shoulders. And they walk one behind the other, picking their way through the stony morass, but always hugging the bank of that little stream, as if it seemed to them a living guide through that Valley of the Shadow of Death. He who walked first, George Vivian, was a young man of gallant bearing and handsome countenance, with the features which belong to those races and ranks of men who contend and command. And yet his face, altogether, had not their expression. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.