Iron County register., 1881-02-10

the way of holiday until it was promised |
in that year of grace, 1865. A dreamy. |
lad, the tradition OF mis- |
fathers fate had come down to him with |
an impressiveneSs which increased with |
his years. But of course it had only |
been tradition, after all of the tangible,
actual sorrow of that fatal time and ats |
results he had known nothing, realized
nothing Youth, strong health and
commensurate good spirits made him,
Notwithstanding his reflective nature,
happy, CHEEKY fellow, who was bent on
making the most of his holiday now that
it had come. woyoungsters in similar
circumstances to his own were OIL with
excursion tickets to the Lands End, and
he arranged to join them.
Very soon the sight of mighty cliffs,
of foaming, thunderous seas, OF vast
stretches of bleak Cornish moor, and the
stories of the wild places and all the
legendary lore clinging to that ancient
western land, began TO take possession
of young Ronald, and stir what there
was of the poetic and dreamily imag-
NATIVE in his nature. He drank In Gag
erly all descriptions and accounts which
he could get of the lonely districts and
ludCCcSSlUlC 6OlltuuCS ny "AAASh AAO ''N0
surrounded. Rod and line mainly oc-
cupied the attention of his companions,
and, though he was no fisherman him.
self, he would accompany them Tor
miles along the moorland streams where
they sought their sport They met so
little success, however, in their efforts
to catch the willy trout that, like most
novices, the young men attributed their
failure to the fish, or rather to their ab-
sence. The Devonshire rivers, it was
declared, would afford them a fairer
opening for their skill; SO they harked
back eastward, and found themselves
after while whipping the pools and
rocky channels of the West Dart. They
took up their quarters at the small inn
in an out of -the-way hamlet known as
Two Bridges, some eight miles from the
town of Tavistock, and found the soli-
tude of this unfrequented and almost
mountainous region compensated for by
the better luck which attended their
fishing. Indeed, to Ronald's dreamy
nature the romantic and desolate char
acter of the scenery had an especial
charm, and while his friends were oc-
cupied with their favorite paStime he
would often wander far afeld eXplor-
ing the remotest Businesses OF stream
and fell.
The account which he sent home to his
mother of the last of these solitary ex-
petitions graphically brings this story to
a climax.
"The day." he wrote, "was still and
cloudy; gray mist hung heavily on all
the highest tops, and crept far down
their sides in graceful, fantastic, ever
changing folds. Such as light move
ment as there was occasionally in the
ART could not be called wind-carried
the lightest sound to and fro with q
wailing sort of echo. The never ceas-
ing rush of the river over its rocky bed
was audible long after had wandered
away from it, and at intervals the
voices of my two fishermen friends fell
family on the ear. Presently, however,
curve in the way across the hillside
over which l was walking shut off all
sound even of voices or running water,
and l experienced keener sense of
loneliness, perhaps, than l had ever
known. Very rarely, l take it, could
nature have appeared so utterly
motionless; not a blade of grass stirred.
There was hush on everything which
was almost terrifying-fit prelude, it
would seem, as look back upon it, to
the storm of emotion which was so soon
to overwhelm me. Another turn in the
track plunged me, if possible, into a yet
deeper silence and solitude. I was on
the verge of a dreay, rugged, bowlder.
strewn valley, in the depth of which
appeared what at first looked like three
large patches of scrubby underwood,
but which on approaching them proved
to be composed of stunted, diminutive
oak and mountain-ash trees, their dead
bare tops, all spread and flattened out
as evenly as though they had been Gu,
by some gigantic scythe-which
guessed to be the mighty, seldom lulline
blast of an all-prevailing wind sweeping
up the hollow. The trees grew amid
massive blocks of granite, covered, as
were the stems, with a dense and
overwhelming growth of lichen and
parasitical plants. A yet closer
acquaintance with it showed the spot tc
be one of the strangest had ever seen
or dreamt of the gaunt, bleached
outspreading arms of the trees had some
thing skeleton-hke and ghostly in theil
aspect; weird demons of the forest they
might be, stunted gnomes struggling
with outstretched misshapen limbs tC
free themselves from the superincum
bent weight of the split and toltuOu:
rocks which held them fast, earth -bounC
as it were, between their clefts and fis
sures. A CHASTITY, ghostly, uncanny
awful spot, indeed, and seen under the
gray gloom of the waning autumn-day
, and in the silence and the mystic soil
tude surrounding it, most impressive.
can not describe the sensations will
which approached the outskirts of thi
wood, for despite its forbidding char
, acter, 1 felt myself irresistibly drawn
toward it. 1t seemed to exercise on mt
, facination, a spell, which cowed m,
, will, and while almost ,curdling M,
: blood, yet impelled me forward, knew
, not how or why! 1t was spot to fie'
, from rather than penetrate; it might b.
likened to witches trysting- place, tn
+ haunt of evil spirits, of demons, elve
| and goblins, who all had found EN-
bodiment in the shrunken and mis-
Shanen trees