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: unto Cknfts. The snow lay so deep on the ground, that the carriage had driven up to the very door of the cottage, seen but not heard. No sound of wheels or horses’ hoofs had prepared them for the approach, so that the sudden arrival of a ponderous, closed-in vehicle, in total silence, produced a more awful impression on the mind and spirit of the astonished youth than he had ever before experienced. Two or three men in close travelling dresses alighted from the box and roof, whilst a fourth, leaving the carriage, lifted from it an object, which appeared to Frederick, as he watched the whole process from the window, not unlike, in shape and height, a full-sized harp, covered by a prodigious dark cloth wrapper. Mostcarefully he carried the burden, whatever it might he, in his arms, and entered the dwelling followed by two of his companions. Apparently they all retired to a distant part of the spacious cottage; for Frederick and his mother remained still alone. What is all this! exclaimed the youth, whose gentle boyish nature seemed on a sudden to burst into that of dawning manhood.
Who are these strange men ? I insist on knowing? how dare they thus intrude into our house ? Is not this dwelling yours and mine I detest mystery of every kind.?I will know the truth. ?Who is that tremendous-looking fellow speaking at the door to Esther? By heaven she is shaking hands with him! Oh oh! then he shall shake hands with me too. Wrought up to the very climax of frenzied wonder, he was leaving the room furiously, when his mother, with almost supernatural strength, detained him.
0 meet them not in this temper, Frederick; is it not sufficient that / know them?that 1 expected them?that I am aware of the commission they are come upon?and that I know, to my sorrow, it must b…
